Lessons in Effective Sales Training, Education and Development.

I was facilitating a 3-day strategic planning session for a client years ago. Like in many cases the Chief Executive Officer, towards the end of the third day asked be if I could develop a sales training program for is sales team. I had never done any sales training before although I had a couple of personal books in sales and communication and have read them. I did not show much enthusiasm for his suggestion so I kind of gave a weak yes, arguing that I had never done any sales training before. He confidently told me that he believed I could do it. I just kind of brushed it aside politely.

About a week after the strategic planning session, the CEO called my again calling for a meeting with him and his sales manager. The subject was a two-day sales training program. When I went to the meeting I was expecting the usual meeting where a client calls you for a meeting and it becomes almost a court where you have to answer so many questions about your capabilities. This was went extremely the opposite. The CEO came into the meeting, introduced me to her as a strategy and "sales training guru", leaving me feeling embarrassed. He literary dumped me with his sales manager, telling her to finalised the training fees issue and the venue. Which we did.

I had no sales training program at all, not even a 30 minute speech on the subject. For the sake of the CEO I played confident, asked a lot of questions about their sales situation and what they wanted to training to do for them. Well, the truth is I had both training and experience in training in general, so I knew how to approach any training, education and development situation.

When I went back home, I immediately started my thing that I normally when I develop any new sales training program, seminar or workshop. Now that I knew that this sales team had never done any sales training, I figured out exactly where to start.

I developed and delivered my two-day sales training program and got very flattering responses from the sales manager and the participants. The sales manager referred two of her sales-manager colleagues to have the course for their teams.

Now, I realized also that there was something else called sales leadership and sales management, so I proposed to the now three sales managers a 3-day or 24-Hour Sales Leadership and Sales Management Course, which they accepted and took very enthusiastically.

One friend of mine who was very interested in my seminars, workshops, programs and courses looked for more clients and also organised a few sales training workshops on a revenue-sharing basis. So sales training, education and development became one of my areas of work.

My biggest sales assignment was a five-day sales boot camp for vehicle sales consultant that we ran at Pamuzinda Safari Lodge which I put together from scratch. To date I have developed sales and selling training education and development courses, seminars, workshops and programs and also those specific to the following'

1. General Universal Application Sales and Selling Training, Education and Development
2. Vehicles
3. Property
4. Services
5. Computers and Other IT Services
6. Selling training and educational programs

Lessons Learnt

1. Sales training in many companies and business is poor and limited largely to short product awareness sessions.
2. Many CEOs, entrepreneurs and business managers want prolific sales results from sales people they do not train, lead and support well enough to produce that level of results
3. Confidence in the product or service is an important contribution to the sales performance of sales executives.
4. Sales Leadership and sales management arguably contribute at least 50 percent to the selling success of sales people.
5. The conditions at work, including reward system and motivation matter; no amount of training effort can make much difference in the sales performance and results of a demotivated sales person who is poorly rewarded for her sales efforts and results.
6. Post-training support in the practice and implementation of what was taught and training is very important; without support, the trainees fall into the default what existed before the training event.
7. The most effective approach involves a well-structured, program that covers all key areas of sales and selling. A coaching approach that includes lecturers, conversations followed by practical real-world sales and selling activities and encounters produces the best results.
8. Sales training, education and development must combine general sales and selling training, education and development and product or service specific sales an selling. For example, selling vehicles is not the same as selling property and is not the same as selling clothes.
9. Good sales training programs must combine Teaching and learning (knowledge and information) training, (skills and capabilities), person development (qualities, virtues, values, mindset, personality etc), strategy, psychology and personality profiling, and equipment with tools, resources and strategies. Sales training must also include mathematical models.
10. Sales training, education and development end goal must not be competence but mastery. Mastery is constantly improving.

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?Simon Bere, 2024