“Most sales training is death by Powerpoint, where the trainer tries to impose their philosophy on the salespeople.
This was totally different. It was engaging and completely interactive. Steve pulled out “our” experiences
with examples, audience demonstrations, and the “Tales from the field” interview session.
The feedback from the entire team was overwhelmingly positive.”
Marie Cabrera, Enterprise Sales Manager, IBM

All sales training programs today share the same fundamental flaw. None explain what is truly at the heart of all sales: how to build relationships between people, how salespeople incorporate the elements of human behavior into their strategy, and how to say the “right” words at the “right” time to persuade customers to buy. They don’t offer help where help is needed most--how to deal with the humanness of your customers, your manager, and yourself.

The existing training methodologies do not explain or fully take into account the human characteristics of the people who actually make the purchase decision. They concentrate on the logical and procedural aspects of the sales cycle. In short, they offer frameworks that are limited to the “tangible” processes of the sales cycle. These may include the basic questions a salesperson commits to memory, such as, “What is your budget?” and “What is your time frame?” Other programs emphasize the business benefits and financial justification of the salesperson’s solution. They explain how to create a return-on-investment (ROI) model in order to show customers how much money they will save by selecting their product. However, every company supplies their own ROI and extols their unique benefits. Therefore, how do you stand out from the pack?

Worse yet, almost all of the training sessions I have ever attended were conducted by “talking-heads” who had been off the front line of sales for many years. These experts pretended to be perfectionists who never lost a deal nor ever experienced the disappointment of customer betrayal. How could they relate to the quick transitions from laughter to tears that is a normal part of sales? As a result, they lecture solely about the sales process. In fact, as a sales rep I was almost kicked out of one class after commenting to the trainer, “Those who can, do and those who can’t, teach” (Well, all the other students had a good laugh anyway).

The façade these master practitioners put on is equally absurd. They perpetuate the myth that ideal salespeople are compulsive “go-getters” driven to win at any cost, when in reality, they are normal people like you and me. They espouse a “winners never quit” supermoralism. When a well-known sales coach lectured, “There is no such thing as failure, only feedback,” I had to laugh to myself. I could imagine a junior sales rep telling his manager, “We didn’t lose the deal, we just got some ‘they’re not buying’ feedback.” "All of these experiences left me with the impression that they didn’t even enjoy being around salespeople.”

Many large companies create a separate department to train the sales force to sell. Usually, it is part of the department called “sales operations.” Over the years, I have had my share of interactions with these groups of people. Oddly enough, you will rarely find anyone within this department who has actually sold anything. Since they don’t have any actual experience and it’s far easier to talk about the process of selling than the people involved, the department’s mantra is, “Sales is a process.” As a result, salespeople must fill out more forms, reports, and documents on a weekly basis than Bill Gates does when he files his income tax.