The Evolution of Sales Training

By Jennifer J. Salopek

This article appeared in ASTD T&D Magazine, December, 2006.
Reprinted by permission.
©2006 ASTD

Are great salespeople born or made? Back in the 1950s, when salesmen (nearly always male) made their debut in popular culture and Willy Loman became a household name, little training or support for their endeavors existed. Effective salesmen were born, and had to bring their own innate traits and abilities to the job. What little training there was focused primarily on product knowledge, and if you didn't sell enough widgets, you washed out.

As our knowledge of human learning has multiplied exponentially over the past five decades, the business world has realized that great salespeople - while still bringing some common innate characteristics - can be made. Sales training has come into its own as an important, and lucrative, category of the performance improvement field, now representing an annual investment of $3 billion to $7 billion by American companies alone.

In the past five years, the field has experienced a rapid evolution that follows closely upon the heels of technology developments, completing the transition from training to performance improvement, and representing very different kinds of interventions from the early years. The whole environment in which sales- people work has changed, because buyers are more informed, sales cycles are shorter, enterprises are more global and dispersed, and competition is fiercer than ever. Sales competencies, skills, and techniques have become much more sophisticated, and consumers of sales training are asking for more from their vendors. Several prominent sales training vendors share the stories of their own evolutions below.

Nature versus nurture

We took our question, Are great salespeople born or made? to Jim Mikula, author of Sales Training (ASTD Press, 2004). Now general manager of Cornerstone Development in Montrose, Colorado, Mikula notes, "You must set standards for the word 'great.' However, key attributes for salespeople are that they are outgoing, gregarious, critical thinkers with high emotional intelligence. The world of sales ranges from highly technical to low-end retail. The making of great salespeople has to do with the complexity of the sales job at hand." Although he believes that key skills can be learned, John Asher, chairman and CEO of Asher Training in Washington, DC, says that natural talent and aptitude are crucial to the making of a great salesperson. He encourages clients to have their salespeople complete an aptitude assessment, and provides an assessment tool online.

Linda Richardson, chairman and founder of the Philadelphia firm that bears her name, says that fewer than 10 percent of salespeople are naturals: "Training is very important for salespeople," she says. "It provides an opportunity for continuous refinement, creates repeatable successes, and can help a company take a promising salesperson from very good to superb."

Kendra Lee, president and founder of Denver-based KLA Group, agrees. "Although some people have an inbred ability to sell, I believe that sales is a science that can be mastered."

Are there universal competencies that must be developed to make a great salesperson? Lee says no. "There are three ways to sell," she explains, "that are driven by what you are selling, who you are selling it to, and how well known your product is. The competencies required are different based on the approach those factors require."

By contrast, Asher believes that all great salespeople need five key competencies: natural aptitude, product knowledge, key skills, motivation, and process support. In the world of consultative sales, which accounts for about 80 percent of sales transactions, according to Asher, those key skills are listening, focus, and perseverance.

Richardson, creator of consultative selling, says that, while there are key core competencies, "Generic sales training is a waste of time. Skills must be used in a specific context, and an integrated approach is critical."

Psychological Associates, based in St. Louis, Missouri, was founded in 1958 by two holders of doctorates in psychology from Washington University. Joseph LaMantia, senior vice president of performance consulting, explains his company's philosophy, "Everything we do gets down to observable behavior. We have created a research-based behavioral model based on our beliefs that high-performance sales behavior can be identified and taught." The Psychological Associates model presumes that these four key strategies, operating in an environment of trust, make up high performance:

• Know where you're going.
• Ensure people have what it takes.
• Develop and enable them.
• Help them stay on track.

Key skills and techniques

How do we ensure that salespeople have what it takes? Richardson believes that skills in presence, questioning, positioning, and asking for feedback enable the multistep process known as consultative selling. "Consultative selling is an approach-a philosophy that does not push a product, but seeks to understand client needs," she says. Its steps include:

• preparation
• process
• solutions
• objectives
• closing.

Andrew Kimball, CEO of QBInternational in Larkspur California, says that the evolution of consultative selling is representative of a sea change that's occurred in the key skills and strategies of successful salespeople. Kimball, who's been a provider or consumer of sales training for more than 20 years, notes, "Twenty years ago, sales training focused on manipulative tips and techniques. Today, successful salespeople focus on developing the skills necessary to create authentic relationships with their customers."

However, those relationships aren't all it takes, Asher points out. He notes that, as recently as five years ago, commodity salespeople said that their relationships with customers allowed them to charge up to 10 percent more for their product-but no longer. "Now, everything is being commoditized," Asher says. "People are all selling essentially the same product for essentially the same price. Differentiation is key."

"Product knowledge is just table stakes," agrees Tom Snyder, vice president of strategy and business development at Huthwaite. He goes on to say that, although there is a set of common competencies that represent sales excellence, not every salesperson needs to know all of those things: "It depends on where the salesperson encounters the customer in his buying cycle."

As Kimball notes, sales competencies comprise knowledge, skills, and attitudes. In Sales Training, Mikula writes that great salespeople must have four kinds of knowledge-product, company, customer, and industry-and two crucial skills: disciplined thinking and effective communication. Disciplined thinking means avoiding what Mikula calls a "to-do list mentality;" rather, the salesperson's job is to figure out what makes the most sense for the customer. As to effective communication, this is vital today because buyers have so much information thrown at them; they have little time and attention to sort out garbled messages. That condition, combined with our increasing reliance on email, makes effective written communications skills a critical part of the sales arsenal.

Two of the learning areas that could use more attention, says Mikula, are etiquette and respect. Although those concepts may sound old-fashioned, they can be the keys to breaking down barriers to new customer groups and to being taken seriously in an extremely competitive world. "Companies should be reviewing politeness and good manners with their salespeople, as well as training them on showing respect for their prospects through preparation and professionalism. Companies cannot take those things for granted," he says.

Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

Along with the changing nature of the marketplace, client demands often affect vendor offerings and create new areas for differentiation. We asked our sources what clients are asking for that they didn't five years ago, and how their products and services have changed as a result.

The reasons clients even approach sales training vendors have completely changed, says Snyder. "The training industry was born of a set of gurus, and what they were selling is hope. Now, the gurus have all gone off into the sunset, and customers are asking about ROI; they want to see results in an objective, quantifiable way."

"The applications and specificity of sales training have changed significantly because the context has changed," says Richardson. "Clients want integration of every-thing. Training must be customized so that participants can replicate the skills the very next day to implement their company's strategy." Richardson also has seen her business affected by globalization, noting increased client requests for training virtual sales teams and instruction on cultural diversity for Americans working in other countries.

The firm has accommodated these requests for customization, flexibility, and options by focusing on expanding its e-learning offerings. There is now an online course that accompanies every instructor-led course Richardson offers. Known as QuickSkills, the courses offer clients the opportunity for rapid, inexpensive customization of e-learning.

However, Linda Richardson says that the hottest thing- number one among client requests-is continued support in the form of coaching. Richardson's staff provides monthly follow-up coaching calls to sales-people at many client organizations, helping to ensure the retention of skills taught in their sessions.

For Kendra Lee, the biggest new part of her business is lead generation and new business development. "Five to six years ago, everyone was still on the dot-com high. Businesses had money to spend, and leads were coming to salespeople instead of their having to pursue them. Many sales reps lost their selling skills, and many very experienced salespeople retired," she says. Now Lee and her colleagues are starting back again with the basics for many salespeople, as well as addressing a nontraditional audience: support teams. "Many of our clients need additional resources but can't afford to hire more salespeople, so they're turning to nontraditional areas and engaging support teams in selling," Lee says.

Andrea Sittig-Rolf, creator of the Blitz Experience, a training program for sales professionals of all levels who have the need to prospect for new business, reports two trends affecting her business: customization, in which clients want training scenarios to be realistic for their sales force; and greatly increased client requests for ongoing support after the training. In 2007, for one client, a major desktop PC maker, Sittig-Rolf will be conducting the Blitz Experience quarterly and following up with a webinar once a month.

Psychological Associates has recently unveiled a new blended solution known as SPQ4 that honors customer requests for more practice and trackable results. The system features both online simulations for practicing universal engagement skills, as well as an electronic process for creating dialogue about specific goals between manager and representatives.

Evolution of the selling methodology. "There is irrefutable evidence that adopting and institutionalizing a well-founded sales methodology first is critical to the long-term success of training," Stein says. Without that important framework, sales training is disconnected and ineffective: Stein's research reveals that 90 percent of all sales training programs result in a 90- to- 120 day increase in sales productivity, but, after a year has passed, fewer than 20 percent of companies continue to demonstrate an increase.

Selling methodology must be aligned to, and take into account changes in, the buying methodology, and must clearly delineate the difference between process and technique. "We must understand our customers' perceptions and needs, and be able to articulate in clear terms how our product or service delivers business improvement for our customers," Stein says.

Evolution of the sales performance improvement solution. The sales department has been the last to get attention with regard to performance and measurement, Stein says. "The sales performance improvement solution is . . . an ongoing project of both dramatic change and incremental improvement where the salesperson is exposed to a variety of training, tools, and methods. It is a process of surrounding the salesperson with a cohesive environment for performance improvement options," he writes in the book.

Clearly, a rich and varied patchwork of learning experiences is crucial to making a great salesperson. The vendors that follow offer a wealth of performance improvement options with which you can surround your sales force and transform them from very good to superb.

Jennifer J. Salopek is a contributing editor to T+D; jsalopek@covad.net.