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When training sales people, the first, last and constant mantra is “time IS money”

For them – time is money because the sooner they get out of the room the sooner they can earn money.

For you – time is money because the sooner they get out of the room the sooner they can earn you money; or equally cost you money!

So the role of the L&D professional or sales manager is to:

1) Make sure that the learning is sufficiently ‘engaging’ for the average sales brain

2) Ensure that all aspects of selling are covered in sufficient detail to create a consistent approach

3) Ensure that new skills and behaviours can be demonstrated sufficiently to fully embed that approach; and most importantly

4) Make sure that the learning is followed through, reinforced and hard-wired into the processes of the team

This might all sound very straightforward, but in order to be really effective, we must first understand how the sales brain operates and how it is motivated.

Firstly, there are broadly two types of sales people – commonly known as ‘hunters’ and ‘farmers’.  The ‘hunters’ tend to be more extreme in their behaviour – loud, opinionated, argumentative, mentally astute, believable, funny and engaging.  The deal-maker for me is to choose those with a strong moral code as this provides a compass for managers to set boundaries.  Without this, they can be out of control, egotistical and extremely difficult to manage.  It may sound like a strange mix but to know them is to love them, and believe me the more extreme these personality traits are, the more effective they will be.

The ‘farmers’ tend to be those people that you would happily go for a drink with after meeting them only once.  They are intelligent, charming, facilitative, have natural gravitas and good attention to detail.  But beware!  It is very easy to hire these people but those without drive and a cool determination end up with stress related illnesses and get bumped from department to department because they are liked, not because they are effective members of the workforce.

You normally find that ‘hunters’ make the best sales people, while the ‘farmers’ make excellent account managers.  Training the two types together provides balance to the general atmosphere while providing a natural challenge for both personality types.

Top tip: Driven sales people at a glance?

During my many years as a performance improvement consultant I have a foolproof test for deciding whether a sales team is sufficiently driven – I look in the kitchen!  If the kitchen is untidy and there is no water in the kettle – they are driven.  The observation is that they are so keen to get back to their desk to make the next deal that they dispense with anything that gets in the way of doing that – like washing up, filling the kettle and putting it on to boil for the next person, putting the milk away or turning the tap off properly so that it stops dripping.

The account managers’ kitchen will be tidy, with a full kettle and the teacloth will be hung straight over a radiator or similar to help it dry out!  These are fundamentally thoughtful people who care about other people and have standards for behaviour with other human beings – most likely to be heard to say “cut us and we all bleed” or “do as you would be done by.”

1) Engaging the average sales brain

As a general rule hunters will already believe they know how to sell, so any training you have to offer is simply getting in their way of making money.  Beginning with some stats or an exercise that proves them wrong is normally a good way to get them to engage.  Follow the link to sample my favourite listening exercise.

Once you have their attention (only achieved by proving that you actually have something valuable to offer) interaction is the key to success.

For me, a rounded sales person needs the following skills: telephone sales; writing winning bids; presentation skills; consultative selling skills; negotiation techniques; body language techniques; time management; finally, and most importantly, how to have a winning mentality.

2) A  consistent approach

It is not enough simply to provide the information and techniques, you will have to gain agreement to, or have enough credibility to ensure that this is the only approach that you will accept within your organisation. Boundaries are important for hunters to keep them focussed and for farmers to appeal to their sense of fairness.

Top tip: Introduce a win/loss follow up process that ensures that the sales manager speaks to every decision maker about the decision they made and why; this will keep rogue sales technique in check and identify further learning needs.

3) Demonstrable skills

A strange phenomenon occurs when asking sales people to role play or present to their peers – often they go to pieces.  I’m not a psychologist but am reliably informed that this has much to do with their highly competitive nature and deep seated insecurities (which by the way are the personality traits that drive them, and are therefore necessary evils).  The tendency might be that since the exercise is unpopular and causing some confidence issues bringing it to a swift close in favour of one to one coaching seems like the preferable option – Don’t – good sales people, whether hunters or farmers thrive under pressure and experience a real confidence boost when they achieve.

4) Reinforce and hard-wire the approach

I mentioned the win/loss analysis earlier as a useful tool to reinforce the desired approach, as onerous as it may seem there needs to be a check and balance in place for every skill/step of the sales process.

Top tip: Before structuring any learning for a sales team, begin by plotting their current sales process and then plot the associated skills against the process and analyse the figures or conversion rates for each step.

It is absolutely imperative that your sales team has a winning mentality, that means that they have to believe in themselves and the product/service they are selling.  Involving them in research and development via focus groups is a great way of engaging them, as they will feel that they have some control in improving things.  A ‘dry patch’ in sales is best met with a new challenge (product, service or campaign) or some direction towards a known opportunity to boost them back up.

Top tip: The most important skill you can give to a sales person is personal mental resilience – if they believe that they are winners then they will be winners for you.