In the prologue of my third book, I made the observation that by the time someone graduates from college, they have completed seventeen or more years of formal education, but they didn’t attend a single class on how to raise a child, and they weren’t taught anything about how to sell. Oddly enough, these are two of the most important functions an adult will perform in their lifetime.

Everybody sells! But, sales training generally isn’t part of our formal education curriculum. Perhaps that makes our decisions about sales courses even more important later on as we move through our professional business careers. That said, what we have really been talking about in this book is not just training. We have been talking about the possibility of change—making a conscious decision to do something different that will enhance the strategic effectiveness of your sales organization and ultimately, your bottom line results.

Sales managers essentially have two options. One is to ignore changes in the marketplace and continue using the current approach. For most sales organizations, however, the status quo is your enemy. It is unrealistic to expect competitors to just sit back while your company enjoys a strategic advantage. History has proven that natural market forces will prevail, and we now know that if you are not aggressively working to improve your position in the marketplace, then you are probably falling behind.

The other option managers have is to embrace change as a strategy to stay ahead of an evolving sales environment. Embracing change means taking a proactive role in the ongoing development of your sales organization. It also means stepping outside the box of traditional thinking with regard to giving your sales team a competitive advantage in your respective industry. Of course, sales training and continued development are important elements in any skills-based initiative.

Sales training can be a double-edged sword, however. Most sales managers would say they absolutely want to improve the strategic effectiveness of their sales teams. The question is, how? Many of the brand-named sales training programs that are currently being offered were originally developed way back in the 1970’s and 1980’s, even though the business environment has changed dramatically in the last twenty years. One has to wonder, then, why would you want to train new salespeople with an old-school mentality that may not even be applicable given today’s economic climate? Likewise, sending experienced salespeople back to the same sales training courses they have already attended is another miss. If they had embraced those ideas the first time around, they would still be using them.

Choosing a sales methodology is risky business anyway, because the cost of making a mistake is enormous, starting with the fact that sales training is not cheap. I’m not just talking about the cost of the training itself. In addition to whatever fees are being charged for the training course, you also have to consider the cost of taking your sales people out of the field for “x” number of days. There may also be a significant investment in travel if your team is geographically dispersed, and then you have the logistical considerations for hosting a group event at a convention center or upscale hotel.

Choosing the right training program is another challenge. At the end of the day, you don’t want to spend a lot of money and have the training go poorly. What if the content does not meet your expectations, or the trainer is not well received by your salespeople? In fact, your biggest risk may be the opportunity cost, knowing that it is very difficult to recover from a bad training experience. Given the pace of today’s business environment, companies cannot afford to lose ground, and there is a huge difference between having a productive sales team and one that is floundering. Sales managers also know that their credibility is at stake, and choosing the wrong sales methodology could cost them their job!

This brings us to the explanation of why I am even writing this section on how to pick a sales trainer. Trust me; it’s not to sell you on Question Based Selling. You have already formed an impression about QBS, and we are in the fortunate position of already having an established track record of success. Instead, I wanted to take this opportunity to make some editorial comments on the training industry from my own observations and experiences as a salesperson, a manager, and now, a sales trainer.

Which Problem are You Trying to Solve?

The type of sales training you should choose really depends on what problem you are trying to solve. Sometimes, sales managers are looking to improve their team’s organizational effectiveness. Essentially, they want to define and implement a company-wide sales process that fosters a greater sense of structure and consistency with regard to qualifying opportunities and utilizing sales resources. If your objectives for training are to redefine the sales process, courses like Miller-Heiman’s Strategic Selling™, Holden’s Power-Based Selling™, or Siebel’s Target Account Selling™ are popular choices. At this point, however, most sales organizations have a defined sales process in place, and their salespeople already have a relatively good picture of “what” they are trying to accomplish in managing their territories. For example, let me guess: Step One in your company’s current sales process has something to do with identifying new prospect opportunities, right? Step Two is making the initial contact, hopefully to penetrate accounts at the appropriate decision levels. Then, there’s Step Three, which usually refers to the discovery phase where you uncover needs and qualify the opportunity. Am I close? There is nothing wrong with having a predefined sales process or wanting everyone to be on the same page relative to steps of the sale. Having structure is certainly better than having a random approach across your sales organization.

I should warn you that some companies are not ready to hear what I am about to say, however. But, here goes—just following the steps of a predefined sales process is not enough to differentiate you from other salespeople. If you sell in a competitive marketplace, then your competitors have a defined sales process in place too, and I would bet their approach is very similar to yours. For example, I bet that Step One in their sales process is to identify new prospect opportunities. Step Two is penetrating new accounts, and so on. This raises the question, why would you want to train your salespeople to sound just like everyone else? As we have discussed, teaching your salespeople to sound just like everyone else is the quickest way to commoditize their value in the eyes of prospective customers.

I made the point earlier that most sellers already have a pretty good idea of “what” they are trying to accomplish in the sales process. Consequently, process definition is not the problem facing most companies. The real challenge now is execution, which includes increasing the strategic effectiveness of the sales organization. Most managers I meet aren’t wondering “what” objectives their salespeople should be trying to accomplish. Rather, they are focused on “how” to deliver on these objectives. And, it’s the successful execution of the sales process that will ultimately separate top performing salespeople from their less effective competitors.

Therefore, the desire for sales training has shifted from simply defining the sales process to actually enhancing the selling skills and strategic effectiveness of the entire organization. As I said in Chapter 2, salespeople want to know “how” to penetrate more new accounts, given that potential buyers are more cautious and standoffish than ever before. And, when they reach a customer’s voice-mail, they want to know how to get more return calls. Once they make it past the gatekeeper, they want to know how to pique the prospect’s interest, and how to uncover more needs. They also want to know how to differentiate their value proposition from competitive alternatives, how to deal with possible objections, and how to increase the prospect’s sense of urgency for moving forward with a decision.

So, what problem are you trying to solve? Are you seeking to more specifically define the steps of your company’s sales process, or are you more interested in raising the strategic effectiveness and productivity of the broader sales organization?

What about a Motivational Speaker?

Is it possible for a sales effectiveness program to be motivational? The answer is yes, absolutely! If you teach a group of salespeople how to be more effective, they will certainly get excited. It’s always more exciting to win! But, that does not mean motivational speeches will increase your sales effectiveness.

For me, listening to motivational speakers is great fun. Having been in corporate sales the bulk of my career, I have had many opportunities to listen to professional athletes, astronauts, politicians, celebrities, news anchors, explorers, and people who have overcome physical disabilities, talk about highly motivating personal life experiences. Most of these speakers share a success story that contains an underlying moral lesson. After they talk, we feel motivated because we think, “If that person can do it, I can too!” The problem with a purely motivational experience for salespeople occurs when your team returns to their respective territories. No matter how interesting the speaker was, if your salespeople revert back to using their same old approach, they will likely get the same results—in which case, whatever enthusiasm that was created by the motivational speaker will wear off relatively quickly.

I am not speaking out against the idea of hiring a speaker for your next sales meeting or conference. As an author of three books, I am asked to deliver a fair number of sales talks and keynote speeches myself. You must realize, however, that the objectives of a sales talk are very different than the objectives of a sales methodology course. The goal of a training program is ultimately to change behavior. After two or three days, you want salespeople to recognize opportunities to adjust their current approach, and you also want them to adopt the strategies and techniques they have learned to execute more effectively throughout the sales process. Such behavioral changes that impact sales productivity are not likely to occur as the result of a one or two-hour sales talk, however. Therefore, let’s agree that the objective of a sales talk or keynote address is to simply energize the audience, as opposed to actually changing behavior.

Since I have never climbed Mt. Everest or played professional sports, my goal when delivering sales talks is to energize audiences with a vision for how they can be more successful, as opposed to telling stories of personal achievement. Even if you can’t change the world in a one or two-hour talk, we can absolutely cause people to start thinking outside the box with respect to differentiating themselves in an competitive business environment.

Weeding Through all the Different Choices

Choosing the right sales methodology for your company is critically important. So is choosing the right sales trainer. But there aren’t a lot of Consumer Reports articles on how to make a good choice. Therefore, allow me to offer you a couple quick tips on what to look for, as well as some hard questions you should definitely ask potential trainers.

The first thing to look for in a sales trainer is how they sell themselves. What are they doing when they approach their own clients and customers? This is not as simple as just asking for a resume or references. Remember, everyone looks good on paper! Instead, you want to get a sense of their personal philosophy toward selling. Sales trainers have to market their services to prospective clients, just like you, and how they approach the sales process themselves should give you a good indication of what they will be teaching your salespeople.

For example, when you interview a potential sales trainer, start off by saying, “Tell me about your sales development programs.” Then, sit back and listen carefully to how they respond. If their answer takes the form of a standard elevator pitch, where they start by claiming to have a wealth of knowledge and experience, followed by a dissertation about all the “wonderful” benefits their programs offer, you should run as fast as you can in the other direction.

I know from practical experience that there is nothing a sales trainer can say about themselves or their material that, in the first few minutes of a conversation, will sound dramatically different than what every other sales trainer claims. Everyone touts their ability to help clients penetrate accounts, uncover needs, close more sales, and blah…blah…blah. Let me remind you, if a salesperson sounds just like everyone else, then they forfeit their competitive advantage. Do you want a trainer who commoditizes their own value proposition teaching your salespeople how to sell?

A good salesperson communicates their value against the backdrop of what’s important to the client, rather than just spewing benefit statements. Therefore, you would want a sales trainer to respond with a quiet confidence, saying: “Mr. Customer, I would be happy to tell you about the sales development programs we offer.” Then, you want them to ask, “Would it be OK if I asked a couple specific questions about your sales organization, to better understand your objectives in terms of sales development?” I find that most clients are actually relieved when I ask specific questions about their sales organization, because they want sales training to be tailored around their specific needs.

The next question you should ask a prospective trainer is: “What makes your material different from other sales training programs?” Again, if the goal is to have a competitive advantage in the marketplace, you don’t want more of the same old, same old. You want something that will give your sales team a measurable advantage. Therefore, if a sales trainer is truly able to offer a unique solution, they should be able to articulate what makes their material different from other sales training courses. Don’t be surprised if this question is difficult for sales trainers to answer, which makes it even more important to know if what you are getting is truly different, or just more of the same.

The goal of these interviews is not to put sales trainers on the defensive by asking difficult questions. The goal is to a have a better sense of what you are actually buying, so you can avoid a potential mistake. Think about it like this: If you don’t have a clear understanding (in advance) of what specifically is different about a certain sales training program, then you should be very worried.

Ironically, a great many sales trainer “types” hang their hat on career longevity. “We have trained thousands of salespeople over the last fifteen or twenty years,” they say. While I agree that experience is generally a good thing, so is adapting to changes in the marketplace. Therefore, when you hear these claims, be sure to ask, “What (specifically) in your approach has changed over the last fifteen or twenty years?”

Refuse to accept an ambiguous answer on this one. If their material has indeed evolved over time, a trainer should be able to cite specific examples of how their approach has been updated to adjust to changing market conditions. Ironically, I have found that most of the brand-name sales training courses are still teaching the same basic theories about selling as when I took them many years ago. Now, it’s up to you to decide whether you believe the selling environment for your industry has changed over time, or stayed pretty much the same. In my view, the business climate has changed dramatically, and managers need to be very cognizant with regard to what gives their sales team the best advantage moving forward.

In addition to differentiating their training programs, an effective sales trainer should also be able to articulate specific techniques and strategies that will provide an immediate boost in productivity. Sales managers want results. Therefore, if we’re honest about it, what happens during the actual course is somewhat irrelevant. The key to increasing productivity is a function of what happens when participants go back out into their respective territories and put the concepts they learned into practice.

Be persistent on this issue, too. What (specifically) will your salespeople learn that will provide an immediate impact on results? It’s a fair question. With what’s at stake, you cannot accept a vague response like, “We provide a cohesive set of paradigms that empower sales professionals to…blah, blah, blah.” That’s great, but philosophical generalities don’t increase productivity! Get clarity on what someone is planning to teach your salespeople and how it will impact their performance immediately after the training.

Always Ask for a Money-Back Guarantee

If the goal of sales training is ultimately to produce results, then you should ask for a performance guarantee. Traditionally, corporate sales trainers don’t guarantee their services. But, why not? If a sales manager is going to put their reputation on the line and invest significant time and money, it seems to me that sales trainers should be willing to stand behind their product.

For example, every QBS program that we deliver comes with the following guarantee: If the sales people who attend QBS Methodology training don’t come away saying that Question Based Selling was the very best sales training they have ever experienced, then it will cost you nothing! You should demand a similar pledge of assurance from whichever sales trainer you consider.

Granted, sales trainers cannot control external factors (like how their material gets reinforced after the training), but they can absolutely stand behind their courseware by guaranteeing audience buy-in. Put it this way, if a sales trainer is unable to gain the confidence of the audience, then it is highly unlikely that the training experience will have a positive impact on performance. And, since the sales trainer is in the best position to know their material relative to the objectives of your sales organization, it seems reasonable that clients should absolutely expect a money-back guarantee if the feedback from the training is not “off the charts” positive. Said differently, if a sales trainer is not willing to stand behind their material, why would you want to put them in front of your sales team?

Tailoring Course Content is Critical

Truth be told, there’s a lot of “fluff” in the world of sales training. I may be preaching to the choir here, because most salespeople and managers I meet have already experienced plenty of sales training classes that didn’t deliver the advertised return on investment. Most of us would agree that sitting through a two or three day class just to get one new idea seems like a colossal waste of time.

Every sales trainer is going to claim their programs are great. But, let’s define great. Are you teaching high-level philosophy on how to be successful as a person, or are you giving salespeople specific tools and strategies that will give them a competitive advantage? Does your material talk generically about sales, or is it customized to address the specific challenges sales organizations face, in the specific markets they target? It’s no longer enough to offer generic sales training classes to a client company. You must deliver valuable content that gives them a competitive advantage.

In addition to understanding a trainer’s basic philosophy on sales and what makes their programs different, you should have a clear picture of how they plan to customize their material given the nuances of your specific business environment. Selling technology is different than selling real estate. Likewise, you wouldn’t want a trainer to show up at your pharmaceutical company and use examples about life insurance. Instead, you need to understand how the trainer is planning to customize their material around specific “what if” scenarios that affect your salespeople on a daily basis. Professional athletes, for example, train to perform under certain conditions, and in specific situations. So do airplane pilots, soldiers, and firefighters. They train with specific scenarios in mind to create a heightened sense of preparedness that enables them to perform at the highest levels when needed. If we apply this logic to sales training, we should be giving salespeople the same level of heightened preparedness. So, do yourself a favor. Make sure your chosen trainer invests the time to customize their program and materials to address the specific “what if” scenarios that are, in fact, applicable to your business.

Require a Longer-Term View

A truly effective sales development program requires a long-term outlook. Too often, sales training courses are evaluated on content alone. Are the concepts being taught relevant to our business objectives? Will salespeople get some new ideas or just more of the same? While I agree that course content is definitely important, what’s even more important is finding a program that will produce a lasting impact on your sales team. If a sales training course is indeed worthwhile, you want the material to generate a measurable increase in sales performance over an extended period of time.

Managers know most salespeople don’t have photographic memories. Consequently, most training courses have a certain half-life, which means participants retain only some portion of the material that was covered. Let me ask: How much time did it take you to forget half of the material that was covered in your last sales training course? Without reinforcement, much of the information that gets communicated during the course of a training class will dissipate naturally over time. This is why reiteration of key techniques, as well as reinforcement of desired behaviors, should be part of the implementation plan when selecting a sales methodology.

Another challenge for sales managers is that you can’t expect to completely change the culture of a company with a two or three-day sales training course. Human nature says that people will gravitate to whatever feels most comfortable, which includes returning to selling habits that have been grooved over many years. And, just because someone agrees with the logic presented in a training class, doesn’t necessarily mean those ideas will produce a lasting change in behavior.

Increasing your sales effectiveness, therefore, requires more than just an intellectual decision of how to approach the sales process. It requires a personal commitment from salespeople to step outside their comfort zone and change selling behaviors, as well as a corporate commitment to support these desired changes. The operative word here is “support,” which includes having a plan in place to reinforce the training long after the class has ended.

In my view, the single most important ingredient to successfully implementing a sales methodology is fostering an ongoing transfer of knowledge. Salespeople can learn from a trainer, but they can also learn from each other. Therefore, the opportunity to create lasting changes in behavior hinges on the client’s ability to create an internal network of coaches and mentors who can reinforce the material that was communicated during the actual training. But, these internal resources need to be coached along the way, which is why it’s important to look for a program that takes a longer-term view, offering advanced development programs as well as train-the-coaches opportunities that can reinforce desired techniques and strategies, and take your company’s in-house expertise and understanding of the material to a deeper level.

In short, you shouldn’t be talking with sales trainers about a specific course or event. Instead, you should talk with them about what will happen after the training to create lasting changes in behavior, and produce the desired return on investment.

Outside Trainers Are Not the Enemy

Some of my best friends, and biggest supporters of QBS, have come from in-house education departments at large corporate client accounts. The sequence of events is predictable. Someone takes the risk necessary to bring Question Based Selling in for a “pilot” event, the feedback from the training is “off the charts” positive, and suddenly, we’re friends for life.

I have noticed, however, that some corporate educators are turned off by outside trainers. I’m not sure if it’s about protecting their own turf, or because they feel threatened by an outsider, but rejecting innovative ideas just because they were not “invented here” is a dangerous practice in today’s business environment. I had one experience where a director of corporate training got upset because the feedback from QBS methodology training was “too positive,” when compared to other sales training courses they had been delivering in-house.

Having a negative attitude toward outside sales trainers is problematic because it creates an adversarial relationship. I just talked about developing mentors and coaches, so you can tell I am a supporter of in-house expertise. I can understand why corporate educators might feel most comfortable with their own programs. We already agreed that people tend to gravitate to whatever they feel most comfortable with. But, this protective mindset might actually work against you if your in-house training programs are not continuously being enhanced to stay ahead of your competition.

I sometimes hear from corporate educators the argument that a program like Question Based Selling may be “too advanced” for inexperienced salespeople. They would much rather see a basic “Sales 101” curriculum for new salespeople, the idea being that newer salespeople could come back and receive QBS training at a later date. I would counter by taking the position that teaching salespeople to sound different than your competitors doesn’t require them to have experience. In fact, think about this: Why would you want to train a new salesperson to commoditize your value proposition in the eyes of prospective customers, when you could teach them how to differentiate themselves and your solutions in an increasingly competitive marketplace?

Ultimately, sales managers are trying to increase their relative effectiveness and gain a competitive advantage in their respective markets. But, companies do not always have internal training programs that can accomplish these objectives. Therefore, there is room, in my view, for outside trainers to work in conjunction with corporate educators to provide quality programs that result in a win/win relationship, as opposed to being perceived as a political threat.

Sales Excellence is a Choice

Some people have a special gift for sales. They were born with an innate ability to communicate, and success tends to follow them into every endeavor. Other people are gifted athletes. In every sport, there are top performers who don’t have to work that hard to make the game look easy. I’m sure that there are also gifted doctors, attorneys, accountants, architects, engineers, and teachers, who all have the ability to make their professions look easy.

The way I see it, gifted salespeople are the exception rather than the rule, however. Most accomplished performers in every profession have had to earn their success. This is definitely the case in sales. At some point, top performing salespeople have had to make a conscious decision to become the best in their field. Being the best in sales requires an ongoing commitment to developing product knowledge and industry expertise. It also requires sellers to be strategic in their positioning, so they will be perceived by customers as an invaluable resource, as opposed to just another sales caller.

I believe sales effectiveness is a learned behavior. Many times, I have taken a struggling sales team, and with a few adjustments in strategy, greatly enhanced their performance. It is equally rewarding to take a team of experienced professionals, who have been fairly successful in their careers, and raise their sales performance to the next level. In fact, in all the years I have been training salespeople, I have never met a top performer who didn’t want to improve their skills, in order to become even more successful.

We have spent a great deal of energy in this book focusing on the softer skills and on sales effectiveness. Essentially, the goal has been to make you and the rest of your sales team more productive throughout the entire sales process. The key to success at this point is a choice, one that starts with you making a conscious decision to differentiate yourself and your sales team from the rest of the “noise” in the marketplace. From there, your success will likely be driven by your ability to implement the techniques and strategies talked about in this book, and your personal commitment to becoming a student of the sale throughout the rest of your professional career.

(Copyright 2004, QBS Research, Inc. This article is an excerpt from The New Era of Salesmanship. Author: Thomas A. Freese)

Thomas A. Freese, president of QBS Research, Inc., is recognized as one of the foremost authorities on strategic sales methods and buyer motivation.