Wednesday, 08 February 2012

• Sales Training Courses: Worthwhile Training That Will Deliver Results

  At all times it pays to listen carefully in sales training courses. Even id sales are healthy targets can always be beaten and reserves laid aside for the down cycle that will come, inevitably. In bad times survival becomes an issue and training can add an edge to performance.

  The value of sales training courses is well illustrated in the television series known as 'The Office'. The fortunes of a good salesman and a bad salesman are followed taking viewers through the hilarious ups and downs of two characters named David and Tim.

  David is pathologically unable to listen, and that is as a result of his self centeredness. Tim is a very good listener, and able to take his turn to speak at just the right moment. So the two characters sum up the epitome of good and bad sales technique. In one vignette Tim concludes a sale over the telephone showing exactly how a deal should be closed.

  After viewing the series some people might conclude that people are either born with selling skills or without them. This is undoubtedly true to an extent and is supported by facts that show some people will sell a great deal more than others under identical conditions. However this in no way abrogates the value of training.

  Even a person who can instinctively sell ice to Eskimos can improve his performance with training. In selling the sky is the limit and targets can always be exceeded. That is because selling is a dynamic process that is never static. One of the important things is adaptability, and this requires the skill of adjusting constantly to ever changing circumstances. When a person feels that he has learnt everything that there is to know, that is surely time for him to take a course.

  As office lives roll on people evolve within the context of their firm. Different roles are assigned. A person may be moved from field staff to business to business roles and new staff without experience may be employed. That does not mean to say that experienced staff will not benefit from the same course in which experienced sales professionals will interact with individuals enrolled in a training course. In some cases firms even offer the added benefit of email support after a course has been concluded.

  In fact, good refresher courses provide opportunities for morale boosting if they are well run. They should be fun, so that people learn together how to align their different talents in identifying and meeting the needs of clients. A company will certainly do better if its sales corps is working in unison with other role players such as accounts managers and business development managers.

  Some sales training courses focus on particular skills that need to be developed further. The skill of listening may be important, but within that one skill there may be sets of sub-skills such as identifying needs and bringing a prospect to the point of closing. There may be no one agreed list of all the skills needed but a good trainer will identify in the group the people who need to develop in one direction or another. In some cases a training company will even follow up on progress by allowing trainees to have email contact with instructors after the course has been completed.

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