On the Job Sales Training by Garret Norris

I was speaking with a Sales Director the other day on a sales training workshop, talking about sales activity, and he told me a story that I can hardly believe. He was out with a member of his sales team on a call delivering on the job sales training in Sydney and they made a call to a company. After a long conversation with a non-decision maker he asked “if their Director or Project Manager was in today?” The response was “yes he is somewhere around would you like me to see if he is available?” The sales guy quite sincerely said “no, no that’s okay, could you just give him my card and ask him to call me”. Well as you can imagine I was horrified hearing this. I asked why on earth would he not have pushed to see him while he was there? The response was “he is KPI’d on visits as well as revenue………” On further investigation he told me that they are struggling to achieve sales targets however at a recent industry awards evening they secured 6 Gold and 1 Bronze awards which should be used to leverage opportunities with existing clients, and a very targeted prospect list. When the rep was asked further why he didn’t pursue the decision maker further, especially as the Sales Director was with him, the salesman replied “It wouldn’t have made a difference as I keep getting beaten on price because our competition are cheaper”. Our client strongly believes that they can become the leading company in their sector in Australia and New Zealand. The only way the will get there though is through solid sales training and on the job coaching to give their people the skills and confidence to change the “knock on the door” culture and move the team into solid sales professionals. From a study conducted by Harvard Business, of the 479 U.S. business programs accredited by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business, only 101 have a sales curriculum, and a mere 15 offer either an MBA in sales or some sort of sales-oriented graduate curriculum. Sales may be vital to businesses, but of the 350,000 students a year who earn bachelor’s degrees in business from American universities, and the 170,000 who earn MBAs, only a tiny fraction have been taught anything about it. What are your sales people? Professional visitors or relationship builders? Garret Norris is a Senior Sales Performance Specialist with the KONA Group and if you would like to discuss how he can help you to get your sales people back on target please contact him on 1300 611 288 or info@kona.com.au