Train Them and They Will Grow... Right?

“Sales” and “training” are often paired as the supreme cure-all for poorly performing salespeople. If a salesperson isn’t selling, then he doesn’t know what to do and needs training.

That’s the logic many sales managers employ to solve the troubling issue of low performance. Unfortunately, doing so can be misleading and fail to deliver results.

Training is extremely important, but it is not a panacea.

The difficulty with this approach begins with the assumption that a lack of selling skills is the reason why salespeople fail. In some cases, that may very well be true, but using training as a blanket solution to all sales performance problems usually results in inconsistency.

Skills training or motivational seminars should be considered as a possible solution, but it should be part of larger list of options.

Before settling into the “train-or-terminate” mode, you first must determine the source of the problem. Many times sales managers attempt to apply a skills solution to a people problem.

Consider this scenario. A football coach brings in a quarterback to play on the offensive line. When the quarterback continues to get run over, the coach says, “You can’t block. You need to practice your blocking.”

The skills training will probably improve the quarterback’s knowledge of blocking, but it won’t make him a better offensive lineman.

He’s not built to play that position.

Sales managers do the same thing. They look at a poor performing salesperson and send him through sales training. The problem, of course, is he’s not really a salesperson at all.

He’s not wired to perform in that role.

There are a number of reasons why a person may be under-performing. He may be the wrong fit because a behavioral conflict with the role. It may be he doesn’t value what the role rewards. It may be ineffective sales management. Or, it could be a flawed pay plan.

There are dozens of reasons why a salesperson fails to sell.

Because of the variety of reasons, shipping someone off to get “trained” will be a waste of time and resources.

You must identify the source of the problem before applying a solution. Knowing whether you have the right person for the role before you invest in them gives you a greater chance for building a successful team.

By evaluating a sales candidate’s capacity to perform in the future, you avoid hiring someone who will most likely fail to meet your expectation.

Once you’ve hired a quarterback for your sales team’s offensive line, you’ve got very few opportunities for turning him into something he can’t be.

How many times have you hired a salesperson who hasn’t delivered results, sent him to training, and nothing happened? Clients come to us all the time from this scenario. Others want training without asking the more important first question.

Do I have the right person?

Until you have an objective analysis answering this question, all the training in the world may prove ineffective and temporary.

If you are utilizing training as your only option for solving sales performance problems, contact us at 336.665.0506 to discover a totally different approach to improving your sales team.