Christensen perseveres: "45 minutes? 30 minutes? 10 minutes?" A few hesitant, not altogether convincing, hands are raised.
Christensen’s point is this: even those more proactive sales types (the 30 or so gathered here have after all come along willingly to this session), rarely spend time actually studying and honing their technique. Received wisdom suggests that, when it comes to sales, you either have the gift of the gab and the ability to sell ice to Eskimos or you don’t. And you just can’t learn that stuff.
Or can you? Franklin Covey certainly thinks you can. UK president and general manger Kevin Vaughn-Smith explains, when I catch up with him after the session, how bizarre he finds the all too common belief that the kind of formal training businesses give to other staff, won’t be effective for sales personnel.
"We hire sales people. We don’t train them, we hire them. We absolutely know that’s happening," he says. "And yet other professions invest lots of time refreshing their skillset. Imagine if your GP wasn’t spending at least 10 minutes a day reading up on the latest research."
Admittedly the consequences of a salesperson not being on top of their game won’t be as potentially disastrous. But the results could still be pretty devastating to the company in question. "If my business is defined by my success in selling, why wouldn’t I spend time on this skill?" points out Vaughn-Smith. "No matter how good I am at printing, how good my technology is, how exciting my ideas are, if no one buys from me, it’s a waste."
Conjuring skills
The problem is that many see the process of selling as miraculously making magic happen, says Nick Devine, founder of The Print Coach. "I show people a ‘Four master skills in business’ chart with sales, marketing, leadership and strategy at the top, and production, fulfillment, finance and administration at the bottom. I ask where most of the resources are invested and it’s always the bottom. Then I ask ‘where’s the opportunity to grow your revenue?’ And they say the top. That’s because the bottom areas are predictable so ‘if I buy this machine I’ll get an ROI in 18 months’. The top two feel more like art, but they’re not at all. It’s science, they just don’t understand it."
According to ProCo managing director and training-advocate Jon Bailey, neglecting to invest in teaching this science is ill-advised not only in the face of how vital it is to the health of a business, but also considering the make-up of the average sales team.
"You tend to make your sales team out of people who have either always worked in print, or a mish-mash of people who happen to be good in front of customers. But that doesn’t actually make them good sales people," he says.
Sales people are much less likely to hold a sales-related qualification, agrees Simon Broom, curriculum manager for sales courses at training providers Tack International. "I have only ever met one person who meant to go into sales," he says, explaining that, while this doesn’t mean salespeople are any less passionate about or suited to their roles, it suggests training will be imperative.
So just what form should this training take? A boss’s immediate reaction might be to get their whole team booked on to the next externally run course in their area. But this isn’t always the best approach.
Certainly an external influence can be very valuable. If sales is to be treated more like a profession, it stands to reason that you might want to enlist the help of a professional. Such an expert will after all hopefully be well-versed in techniques the busy salesperson won’t necessarily have had time to discover.
Broom cites the example of his expertise in neuro-lingusitic programming (NLP) techniques to aid motivation: "I’m an NLP practitioner. It’s an accumulation of skills to manage yourself internally. So I help people to realise, for instance, that when they’re having a bad day they’ve developed a strategy for demotivating themselves. They stare at the phone and it’s breathing at them, it’s got teeth, and they imagine the person at the other end as red-faced and angry."
"I encourage people to re-imagine that situation with a happy customer. You’d be amazed how much difference that simple exercise makes."
As nifty as such tricks are, however, there is a danger they’ll quickly be forgotten. "By two in the afternoon, 50% of what I’ve taught a group in the morning will have been forgotten," says Devine. "So a year down the line, they remember they’ve been to the event but can’t remember what they learned."
For this reason, many advocate a training provider who works more closely with a business than a one-off refresher course will allow. Tack, Franklin Covey and Nick Devine all ideally like to work this way.
The added benefit with this approach is getting training tailored to your needs, says Linney Group managing director Miles Linney. "We work with one guy extensively and everything he does fits within the Linney way, of the long-term consultative sell," he says.
Trickle-down training
Another good option, says Broom, is to send just the sales manager on a course so they can implement regular training back at the office. "We say let’s train your sales managers to train and support your sales people, then you can feed yourselves," he says.
Either of these approaches should be particularly effective in implementing that technique so apparently alien to delegates at the introduction to Franklin Covey’s new sales training programme, and yet so strongly advocated by the company: regular practice. "The real change comes on the job where you spend 10 minutes a day practising a certain technique," reiterates Vaughn-Smith.
Christensen explains that the techniques practised in role-play exercises needn’t be just new tricks. It’s just as vital, if not more so, to practise those simple behaviours that hopefully happen most of the time anyway, but will boost success still further if implemented without fail.
Which suggests that internal training, where strong examples of best practice already exist within an organisation, could actually be the best approach. "People never say ‘I have never thought of that before’. What we talk about is all common sense," says Christensen.
"The reality is that two thirds of sales training is internal. It’s not down to whether it’s internal or external, it’s down to whether people understand the process of behavioural change," adds Vaughn-Smith.
It would seem, then, that formalising sales skills isn’t a concept born simply out of training organisations being keen to turn a profit. Many such organisations happily admit the best way of transforming sales into a profession mightn’t involve them at all.
Which isn’t to say external help might not be of real use. Ensuring best practice is continuously adhered to might after all take a pair of fresh and expert eyes to determine just what that best practice is. But formalising a set of skills shouldn’t amount to token training days that, though formal and structured, aren’t of much use long term. Instead, consideration will be needed in sending sales staff back to school this September. This way bosses will be able to determine just what sort of schooling will instil a method for creating sales magic.
Top tricks for boosting sales performance
- Think carefully about your intent "Whether you want it to be or not, your intent will be communicated, so we do an hour in our programme just focusing on mindsets," says Franklin Covey’s Christensen. He explains that always approaching an interaction with the intention of closing a deal will have a detrimental effect on the salesperson-customer dynamic. So scaling back the aim to arranging a meeting for example – while still making sure there’s a clear objective and that this makes sense in relation to that specific client – can often be a good shout.
- It’s particularly important to practice openings "The first few seconds make or break a relationship so you really need to rehearse them," says Christensen. "At some point stuff comes out of your mouth, so you can either wing it, see what comes out, or you can actually be prepared."
- Practice framing questions as presuppositions to discourage yes or no answers. So not: ‘Are you having problems with your current supplier?’, but ‘What challenges are you facing with your current supplier?’
- Sounds simple, but ensure you’re really listening "The challenge with the ‘natural’ sales guy, is to get them to stop talking about the product. The best skill to have is to listen and understand," says Tack’s Broom.
- Handling common objections should be rehearsed with colleagues to ingrain a process of acknowledging these before countering them. This will also strongly ingrain counter arguments in the salesperson’s mind. "I would make the role-plays short and to the point. I think high frequency but short duration is best," says Broom.
- Research strong referral leads before asking for contacts from customers. The Print Coach’s Devine says: "When you say ‘can you think of anyone who might be good for a referral’ the customer is trying to process multiple groups of people so they tend to say ‘I’ll be sure to let you know,’ and the salesperson never hears again. A better way is to go to someone’s LinkedIn profile, then say ‘I’ve noticed you have a connection with person x – would you mind making an introduction?’"
