Sales training

As we have already noted, the people you hire are like items on a conveyor belt that is constantly moving. We have also mentioned several times that if you only offer people money, they won’t stay with you and won’t be committed to their work. A significant amount of time in a manager’s schedule should be dedicated to training.

Stages of training

Every newcomer who joins the company should receive an introductory course that should cover the following topics:

• Introduction to the company: This company is the best fit for you. Here, we have certain rules and customs. You will achieve a lot here, and we have great potential for growth and development.
• Introduction to the Product: Our product is the best. Here, an analysis should be provided to explain why that is the case. This includes a comparison with competitors’ products, a description of the advantages, and key differentiators. The seller must genuinely believe and be confident that the product they are selling is the best. It’s important to carefully remember which specific product we are selling, keeping in mind the chapter about who the actual customer is. For instance, if we are involved in the supply of high-pressure pipes, our product is not just the pipe itself, but equally important is the discipline in delivery and adherence to our commitments.
• Introduction to Sales. Description of the target client, methods of contacting them, the needs of the client that our company addresses, sales standards, expected income.

These introductory lessons should be structured not as lectures, but as dialogues, so that the participants are actively engaged, allowing you to immediately identify who is enthusiastic and who is just a dead weight. One common recruitment technique is to gather a group of job candidates once a week and conduct introductory training sessions for them. After that, it will become clear who will stay and who will not, and where to invest your time and energy.

The goal of introductory training is to instill confidence in a person—confidence in their abilities, confidence in the product, and confidence in the company. In our hectic age, filled with uncertainties and vague dangers, people instinctively gravitate towards those who exude confidence. The attraction of the buyer to the seller is half the battle in making a sale.

Next, we need to teach the salesperson how to “source” clients and engage with them. This

• developing the skill of making cold calls
• the ability to take recommendations and leads
• the ability to make a client loyal
• the ability to maintain and manage a client database

What to teach

One day, a woman selling cottage cheese at the market complained to me that the market owners had become real penny-pinchers. They charge 50 hryvnias for a spot, and then you also have to give them a liter of sour cream (30 hryvnias) and a kilogram of cottage cheese (25 hryvnias) supposedly for “laboratory tests,” which no one actually conducts. I asked her how many of her customers were first-timers. She replied, “Ha! If they can make it, because the regulars take everything, and anyway – look at this list – these are orders from last week.” I then asked her what kept her at the market if she could just call her clients in the evening, ask how much cottage cheese they wanted, and deliver it already cut and packaged right to their homes. This would give her…

• and it provides her with the assurance that the client won’t run away, while also offering the client the convenience of not having to go to the market in the morning;
• and saving money – visiting all the clients who clearly live close to the market, even by taxi, will be cheaper;
• and time savings – you can get rid of the product in an hour instead of a day, and transport exactly what you need, not more than that.
• and an easy way to acquire new clients – the neighbors of existing clients will appreciate the service and will start ordering as well.

She certainly ignored my suggestion. After all, she has been selling at the market for 20 years and will continue to do so for another 20. If she were more proactive, she would have found something more profitable than just standing at the market a long time ago. This example shows that there are countless ways to attract new clients to your business, and this is something that needs to be taught to salespeople. It’s important to understand what these clients need and how information about you as a selling organization spreads. These things matter even if your clients come to you for products on their own. If we want to teach our salespeople about sales, we need to start with how to acquire clients.

After we teach the salesperson how to acquire clients, we will focus on teaching them how to sell. In this case, we need to understand whether selling our product is a “long” or “short” sale, or, according to Rackham, a “large” or “small” sale. Based on this, we will develop both the training and the sales tactics. The following characteristics distinguish a “long” sale from a “short” sale:

Let me explain what I mean.

• About the seller: Let’s say you’re dealing with a seller who looks unkempt or has a bad odor. Would you pay attention to these things if you were buying a concert ticket at a good price, especially when there are no tickets left at the box office and only scalpers have them? Would you consider the seller’s appearance when purchasing a vacation package to a five-star hotel? Would you want to use the services of such a travel agent again when planning your next holiday? And would you feel confident about the quality of your tour?
• About decisions: It’s unlikely that you’ll buy a washing machine without consulting your spouse about the model, unless it’s a surprise gift. However, you’ll probably buy a Swiss Army knife with a dozen blades on your own, and the decision to purchase it will be made on the spot.
• About risk: If you are a large corporation purchasing accounting software, you are not just risking the price of the deal, but the entire processes within the company. You need to take on this risk, and you must have a strong sense of trust in the supplier and their competence. However, when it comes to buying napkins for the conference room, that purchase is so insignificant that it is made by the office manager without consulting anyone.
• About the purchase: If I made a mistake and bought an inflatable mattress that turned out to be of poor quality and deflated, I would just throw it away to avoid my friends’ teasing. But what if it’s a car?
• Regarding the price of the issue: It’s simple: the more expensive the purchase, the longer decisions typically take. This is because the cost of the consequences increases with a wrong decision.
• About emotions. In short sales, emotions play a very important role. Try to buy a soft toy online without touching it, and you’ll understand what I mean. The seller’s enthusiasm, the buyer’s positive attitude, their impulses, and the use of various “closing” techniques are all crucial in the sales process. However, when it comes to long sales, the seller’s role is less about inspiring the client and more about providing solutions to their problems through your product. If you are in B2B sales, you will be communicating with a person who will then relay your conversation to someone else, and what will be passed on are not emotions, but specific benefits and concrete solutions.
• About the number of meetings. If we are selling a product for which your personal contact can make the purchasing decision independently, then it’s worth “closing” the deal on the spot. However, if it’s a situation where, with a positive decision at this level, you will need to communicate at the next level, then it’s more about making progress rather than “closing” the deal.

Once we have trained our salespeople to acquire clients and sell them our product, we need to teach them how to retain those clients. The most crucial and important part of any salesperson’s job is post-sale service. This aspect requires a lot of attention, and this “service” should hardly be treated as a formality. A satisfied customer is always a source of new referrals and new sales opportunities.

Who teaches?

Understanding how your product is sold will help you assess whether a particular external trainer can effectively instill sales skills in your salespeople. You will need a trainer at least to learn for yourselves. Once you master these skills, you will be able to teach sales techniques, explain what a sales cycle or stages of selling are, introduce your salespeople to closing techniques, and focus on after-sales service and obtaining referrals. Note that the same end product can be sold in different ways. For example, beer purchased at a kiosk is a typical short sale, while a supply contract for beer with a supermarket is a typical long sale.

The skills for conducting short sales are quite simple and algorithmic. They can be taught in 3-5 days of intensive training. However, with such skills, one will never be able to sell in long sales. On the other hand, if a person possesses the skills for long sales, short sales will be as easy as pie for them. This is why true professional salespeople master the skills of long sales, even if they may not be fully aware of it. Understanding what skills your salespeople already have and which ones need to be developed can be aided by external consultants, who can listen in on your salespeople during their meetings with clients and gather information on what is well-developed and what requires adjustment.

Regardless of how talented the external trainers may be, as soon as the number of salespeople allows for it, you need to hire your own trainer. To determine how many salespeople you need to justify having your own trainer, it’s simple: if your trainer will be busy for 15 working days in a month, it’s time to get one. It would be beneficial to offer the training position to one of your successful managers. It’s also a good idea to find a trainer from outside your company, even if they don’t have industry-specific experience. What’s crucial is that they have sales experience in general, and ideally in the type of sales (long or short) that your company conducts. When the need arises for another trainer, hire one. Just remember that your trainers are on the same “conveyor belt” as your salespeople, and after a certain level in your organization, you need to pay more and more attention to hiring trainers, focusing on anticipating the need for trainers rather than just responding to it as it arises.

Your internal trainers are always more loyal, more inspired by your internal culture, and, importantly, much cheaper than external trainers.

At first, you’ll need to save on external trainers and structure the training so that most of the knowledge that salespeople need is provided by the managers. For the managers, you can invest in an external trainer, especially at the beginning when you are the manager of your salespeople.

Field training

In addition to classroom training, special attention should be paid to what is known as “field” training. You will never understand how well your salespeople have mastered their sales skills without being present during a sale. You will never know how exactly a salesperson interacts with clients and how they actually find them. You will never be able to grasp the reasons behind a salesperson’s failures or the secrets of their remarkable success. You need to spend time in meetings that the salesperson conducts. However, you shouldn’t reveal that you are a manager. Just come in and sit next to them. Of course, before the meeting starts, you should ask the client if they mind you sitting in and listening, as it is important for you to track the quality of customer service. If the meeting is scheduled in advance, the salesperson, knowing that it will be a joint meeting, should ask the client for permission to bring a trainer who will evaluate the salesperson’s performance. From the outside, it is often clear what is going wrong in the sales process. You can see how the salesperson starts talking too much, how they ask many questions that make the client uncomfortable instead of the right and useful ones, or how they turn the meeting into a boring experience for the client. Field training also includes experience-sharing sessions that you organize for salespeople to share their experiences with each other, discuss their successes and challenges, and seek advice from one another. Such sessions bring people closer together and transform a group of lone wolves into a cohesive team. It is very beneficial to pair experienced salespeople with newcomers. The newcomer usually helps the experienced one with finding clients and scheduling meetings, while the experienced one takes the newcomer to these meetings and demonstrates the sales process.

Eternal battle

Training should not be seen as a one-time event—learn and forget. If you manage sales, training is a continuous and integral part of the job. No matter what kind of business you are building, you can’t expect people to do things on their own. They need guidance and nurturing. This is hard work and can often be routine.

In one recruiting company, a manager complained to me about an employee who comes to work looking unkempt. I asked, “Why haven’t you talked to him about it?” “I have,” the businessman replied, “he comes in looking decent for two days, and then he puts on his old sweater again. I’m tired of reminding him, and since he doesn’t understand, it seems I’ll have to let him go.” I thought to myself that it was unlikely to be just about two days. It seemed more like an emotional reaction. Perhaps the salesperson had been neat for an entire week and then relaxed again. However, I asked aloud, “Is he good at selling?” and received an affirmative answer. My advice to this businessman was simple—keep reminding him about his appearance, as long as he is satisfied with the employee’s performance. Moreover, reminding him about his appearance is part of the product that the businessman “sells” to his internal clients—the salespeople. The businessman seemed to be hoping for a recommendation from me on how to magically improve this person’s behavior once and for all, so he could then do nothing and just “collect the dividends.” It’s very difficult to change an adult, and is it even necessary if you can simply adjust their behavior from time to time?

In my childhood, I had (and still have) very messy handwriting. I fondly remember my math teacher, who spent her evenings with me every three months, tirelessly working to make my handwriting neat again through exhausting exercises. Of course, this neatness lasted no more than three months, and we would find ourselves back at school in the evenings. She didn’t do this because it was part of her job; after all, she was teaching us math, not penmanship. Now, I have no one to help me improve my handwriting, and I stopped writing by hand a long time ago. However, since then, I’ve realized that you can’t renovate an apartment “for eternity”; time will pass, and you’ll have to re-wallpaper, repaint the ceiling, varnish the parquet, and replace appliances. Nothing in this world is permanent, and we should approach learning the same way we do home repairs. From time to time, we need to fix what’s broken. Otherwise, the house will fall into disrepair, and at first, you’ll be embarrassed to invite guests over, and eventually, you won’t even want to go in yourself.