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The Great Sales Training Debate: Round One?
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Business New Haven
11/17/1997
By: Deborah Ketai
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Ask Art Strenkert how he feels about sales training and you'll get a blunt answer: “Seminars don't work.”
The reason? Without continuous reinforcement, salespeople tend to revert to old habits. Strenkert explains that, while sales managers are often charged with training, few “have time to teach pure sales skills on an ongoing basis.”
As area sales manager for the Carrier Corp., covering Connecticut and the Hudson Valley out of the company's Middletown office, Strenkert believes it makes more sense to hire an outside consultant to teach both the sales staff and the sales manager a methodology that everyone can continue to follow.
In Windsor, Ed Foley also thinks sales training should be “repetitious and preferably off-site, just to get into a new environment.” Foley, director of sales for the Wausau Insurance Co., manages a sales force of 14 in the tri-state region. For nearly two years, he and nine of his salespeople have attended training sessions facilitated by TEM Associates, a Rocky Hill consulting firm that is a licensee of the Sandler Sales Institute. The monthly classes provide an opportunity to discuss real-world selling problems, as well as reinforcing basic concepts and techniques over time.
Kim Vegliante, who covers the shoreline for Wausau, says the training has been especially effective in helping her overcome “the power of incumbency” - prospects' loyalty to their current vendors.
Vegliante used to walk out of presentations having closed the sale, only to have prospects renege because “the incumbent agent whined and persuaded them to stay.” Now she uses a “post-sell” technique that allows prospects to rehearse “what they're going to tell the other person.” Once they've verbalized their reasons for switching, very few return to their former vendors.
The problem of weaning prospects away from their current providers is hardly limited to the insurance industry. Foley, for one, appreciates the chance to discuss insurance sales in a non-industry-specific context that gives his people “a fresh perspective on the selling dynamic in general.” In fact, he says, “We've actually started to ask some of our non-sales people to attend the workshops” so that they understand the sales perspective and process. He expects the integrated training to lead to greater harmony between sales staff and customer-service representatives.
Strenkert reminds sales managers to evaluate their staffs before enrolling them in any sales training program. His reasons are twofold. First, because everyone comes with emotional baggage that can hinder their sales success, “Each individual is going to require some individualized training.” Besides, he notes, without measuring current success rates, it's impossible to quantify the results of the training.
Sales managers: Have you achieved long-term, quantifiable results with on-the-job training or individual seminars? If so, call Deborah Ketai at 203-888-7886. Opposing viewpoints-if any-will be presented on next month's marketing page.
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