Here’s a fun quiz! Below are three pieces of training advice. Read each and decide if it came from either: a popular book on training sales people, or a popular book on training puppies.
1. Invest a lot of time in the first 3 months to help your (sales rep/puppy) establish good habits.
2. Remain consistent when training your (sales rep/puppy).
3. Don’t reprimand your (sales rep/puppy) for mistakes made. Instead, quietly direct them to the proper behavior.
So, which advice is for puppies and which is for sales people? Answer: all three are for puppies!
Surprising? Not if you’re a salesperson. If you are, you’ve dealt with a mixture of treats and belt-lashings over the years. Here are 4 reasons to believe the training of sales people hasn’t progressed beyond that of puppies:
1. Like puppies, salespeople, regardless of experience, are often treated as if they know nothing. Years of selling experience can be negated by a simple change of industry. Hiring managers and trainers alike have little patience for learning the intracacies of selling anything other than their own product. Surely that information is irrelevant!
2. Because they all equally know nothing, salespeople and puppies are both given very rigid direction. Despite the recommendations popular management books like, “Leadership and The One Minute Manager“, sales training continues to use a one-size fits all approach. The problem is not that older reps can’t learn new tricks. It’s that they’re less likely to encounter anything that’s truly new to them.
3. When it comes to training, salespeople and puppies are given about an equal level of respect. Yes, humans are permitted to ask many more questions than dogs. But, no sales rep is permitted, realistically, to alter his own onboarding or training process before it’s done. Please don’t question me on this point until you’re done reading this article! (Get it?)
4. After initial training, salespeople face more negative consequences than dogs. Sure, no one is dropping their underperforming reps off at the pound. That would be expensive! Thankfully, the old tradition of negative reprimands are gone – if you’re a dog. Salespeople continue to face the pressure of quota attainment, despite the challenges of specific territories or customers. And, thanks to forced rankings, salespeople are compelled to sniff their own pile of mistakes on a regular basis.
So, what’s a lowly salesperson to do? The best response to being treated like an animal is to act like an intelligent human being. Your manager and trainer don’t want to see you fail. They may have perfect intentions, but no clue how to help you.
If possible, determine for yourself, what knowledge you need to be successful. If you’re not sure what that is, ask. Check first with other reps, then your manager, then you’re training staff. It’s important to talk to someone in the trenches first to learn how business is actually gets done. Only then should you move up the chain to learn the way things “should” work. Most importantly, you can reconcile the corporate and field points of view by asking informed questions in your training class.
Don’t be afraid to bark the loudest! When you get to the field, your leash may be long but your learning time will be limited.
Sincerely,
Meaning2work
Ps: The book I borrow from is, “A Member of the Family: The Ultimate Guide to Living With a Happy and Healthy Dog“, by Cesar Millan.