Why Sales Trainin Tr aining g Fails to Deliver Long Term Results
by Umar Hameed
American Business spends over $7B in sales training every year. The data shows that salespeople revert back to their normal behaviors and production level within 80 days post training.
The reason sales training is short lived is that human beings resist change even when they know they must change. To change this dynamic we need a deeper understanding of human beings.
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This is a problem that sales managers have been trying to solve since the dawn of business. You can almost imagine a merchant circa 1300 lamenting to a friend, “What stops my traders from calling on the bigger kingdoms and getting higher prices is beyond me!” This exact conversation is going on right right now in the offices of sales managers and company presidents all around the globe. The commodity may have changed but the essence of the conversation is the same. What stops my salespeople from attaining the results I know they are capable of? According to David Stein, the CEO of ES research group, an analyst firm focused on the sales training industry, “American businesses spend spend over $7B a year in sales training training and yet the failure rate is over 80%.” ES Research’s data shows that sales training has a motivational effect that fades with time. Stein explains, “Most salespeople revert back to their original production level within 80 days unless there is some sort of intervention that reinforces the training.” There are many approaches to solving this problem, most of which don’t work:
little or no Reward success: Vacations, money, and public recognition work for some. For others there is little motivational value. Beyond that, there is ample research that says rewards start losing their effectiveness effectiveness the more you use them. Punish failure: This can be a great motivator for certain people, but overall it has a detrimental effect on the
morale of the sales organization. And once again its effectiveness tapers off with time. time. Upgrade selling skills : The sales manager or a hired gun comes in and teaches the sales team sales skills that
they usually already know. On occasion something new is delivered that makes a difference. This is a rare occurrence. Sales Training does deliver a boost in sales. Unfortunately, sales usually usually slide back to the normal level all too quickly. Motivation: An impassioned speech from the CEO or a flavor of the month speaker can get the entire sales
team fired up and ready to take take on the world. Salespeople can usually maintain the fervor for days, sometimes for weeks, but eventually their fantasy collides with the reality. reality. And the motivation fizzles out.
External Motivation is Short-lived Internal Motivation is Permanent
One of the key elements of sales training is its motivational effect. There are two types of motivation; external motivation, which is transitory, transitory, and internal motivation, which stays stays with you no matter what. Unfortunately, sales training delivers delivers external motivation. It’s no wonder that the “high” from a great sales trainer often fizzles out quickly. Furthermore, relying on external motivation motivation means businesses constantly have to invest in ongoing sales training just to keep pace. Productivity Cubed ® all rights reserved
The key driver that determines sales success
Most sales professionals intrinsically know there has to be something more than traditional sales training. If we knew what the missing missing element was, we could transform training from a motivational experience with short-term gains into one that provides continuous, improved results. I was on a quest quest to discover this missing element of long-term sales success when an opportunity arose. I was invited to a sales conference. This turned out to be an ideal setting for a scientific experiment to isolate the factors that really stop salespeople from reaching their potential. Salespeople as a group are a re notoriously difficult to study because there is such a wide array of sales methodologies. It’s like comparing apples and oranges. oranges. Even if a company company standardizes on a particular sales methodology, an objective study is still challenging because the individual salespeople d on’t necessarily limit themselves to the sanctioned methodology. For this reason, this particular conference was the ideal laboratory for a more controlled investigation. All the attendees of this conference were Sandler Sales franchisees. Here was a chance to study study a group that consisted of 300+ salespeople that lived and breathed the Sandler Sales methodology. They used the methodology to sell the Sandler Sales training to individuals and organizations. They also taught the methodology everyday to their students. In fact, their commitment to the Sandler Sales System Sy stem was so high these individuals had purchased p urchased a franchise. In essence, putting their money money where their mouth was. They really used the Sandler System so if we found a difference in the results it would give a clue to what the missing element was. I had the ideal laboratory; all I had to do was pay attention and see what would reveal itself. The first thing I noticed was that all of these franchisees where highly driven individuals selling the same commodity, using the same methodology, but some how they were charging cha rging wildly different amounts for the service. A number of franchisees where charging twice as much for the same same service! Now this was interesting, I had a feeling wha whatever tever was causing this disparity might be the nexus ne xus I was looking for. I started looking at all the parameters that might might explain these discrepancies. I looked at the local economy, education, geography, and more. One-by-one I factored out the parameters that were common to the salespeople who charged the most and those who charged the least. Slowly a picture emerged that shed some light on paradox.
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SKILLS &
+
= RESULTS
DRIVE It turns out that the skill level and drive of a salesperson is amplified or reduced by what’s going on inside the salesperson’s head. I have labeled this the human element. With an empowering human element, a salesperson can attain results far in excess of what common wisdom would predict given their current skill level and drive. And conversely you can get a highly skilled and driven salesperson that gets less than stellar results. This would indicate a disempowering human human element. Sales training teaches new selling skills which are very important to any sales career. Sales training also provides much needed motivation to get out there and make things happen. Motivation can also temporarily overcome fear or inertia that hinders a salesperson’s success. The area where sales training misses the mark is in addressing the human element. This is a clear case of 2 out of 3 is bad. As long as the human element goes unaddressed, the only way to get a lasting performance boost is to engage in a never-ending sales training regimen. Understanding The Human Element
Salespeople are driven: they want to get better results, but sometimes it seems no matter how hard they try they can’t break the bonds of their human element. The human element will trump trump skill and drive every time. time. For lasting sales success it’s critical that we understand the human element. The first thing you need to know is that humans have several neurological levels. At the deepest level is where humans hold their beliefs. We have beliefs about being a man or about the government, about selling, money, money, and self-worth; there is a belief about everything in our awareness. awareness. Researchers have discovered that humans have anywhere from 50,000 to a 100,000 beliefs. Our beliefs shape our values, which sit on the next level. Values give us the rules of engagement that allow us to quickly navigate through our complex lives. These are the invisible lines lines that we will not easily cross. On the next level we have our capabilities, capabilities, which define what’s even possible possible for us to do. A good example of this is someone that clearly has the capability to do something but can’t even imagine taking action. action. This is the prison we paradoxically call the comfort-zone. On the final level we have our behaviors. This is where salesmanship succeeds or fails. This is the the layer where sales training focuses its attention. This is the hardest layer to get change. “We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” –
Albert Einstein Productivity Cubed ® all rights reserved
If you want to get better better results, you have to change your behaviors. Changing behaviors is one of the hardest things on the planet to do, even if you really, really want to change. This is why sales training fails to deliver long-lasting results. In order to effectively change behaviors you have to go to a deeper level. The deeper you go, the faster the change, and the longer it lasts. In order to facilitate permanent change, you have to transform limiting beliefs into empowering ones. Change happens in an instant!
Change happens in an instant. People live under this illusion that change is hard to do or that change takes a long time. Another popular belief is that that change is a painful experience. At one level, all of those statements statements are true because we try and facilitate change at the behavioral level. "I wouldn't give a fig for the simplicity on this side of complexity; I would give my right arm for the simplicity on the far side of complexity" –Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. (1841 -1935)
Simplicity on the far side of complexity is where elegance resides. And elegant solutions are simple simple to execute and deliver extraordinary results. I know this sounds cryptic, so let me give you an example of what I’m talking about. I was working with a sales professional who was hitting a glass ceiling of her own creation. No matter how hard she tried, no matter how much more training she received, she seemed unable to earn more than $120K/ yr. All of these these efforts were were focused on her behaviors. She felt frustrated frustrated and stupid because nothing she did worked. In a two-hour session using more elegant tools, she was able to uncover the root cause of the problem and solve it. The whole issue related to an experience she had when she she was eight years old. It was a Friday (pay day) and her dad lost his paycheck on the way home. Now keep in mind mind that to fix the problem all he had to do was ask the payroll department to cut him a new paycheck on Monday morning. morning. Not a big problem. Instead, she saw her father cry for the first in her life. life. This created a negative belief about money that sabotaged her success from then on. The negative belief stated stated that she dishonored her dad if if she earned more more money than him. Her dad never made more than $80K /yr and the belief ensured that she could never exceed $120K/yr. And it made her miserable. Once we transformed the old belief to an empowering one, the more I earn, the more I honor my dad. This new belief shattered the self-imposed glass ceiling that she had created and her sales took off. Change on the belief level allows salespeople to deliver extraordinary results very quickly. About Umar Hameed
Umar is one of the the world’s leading experts on changing human behavior in in individuals and teams. He is the founder and president of Productivity Cubed, an international consulting firm, specializing in getting salesthe beliefs that an orpeople unstuck so they make more money . At the heart of his work, is a concept that the ganization, an individual, or a team holds have an impact on the results achieved. Find more (443) 650-8627 www.ProductivityCubed.com Productivity Cubed ® all rights reserved
