Is Sherlock Holmes real? In one interesting survey, 58% of British teens thought Sherlock Holmes was a real guy … and 20% thought Winston Churchill was a fictional character. This is just one illustration of how over time, the truth becomes fairytale and fairytale becomes truth in our world.
Nowhere is this truer than in the world of sales and business, which has become full of false information that has been perpetuated over the years. This false data may be partly responsible for the poor impression people have of sales, which is a true profession and a very needed life skill.
“Fictional data” is information that is NOT factual, but has become accepted as truth and passed along like wisdom.
Let’s play “Fact or Fiction” on sales and business training.
1. Experienced salespeople and business owners don’t need training.
FICTION. Experienced people need training and are the people who can benefit the most from it.
Think about it: even LeBron James has a coach. It’s not that he needs to be taught to dribble, but a coach can show him a different perspective – someone who sees things from outside of the court while LeBron has only the view from on the court.
LeBron trains daily. It’s called practice. To get to the top of the sales profession and stay there is a continual process and will not happen without a program of ongoing coaching, self-evaluation and self-improvement.
2. Sales and business training doesn’t provide much benefit.
FICTION. Training, if done properly, will increase sales results and make your bank account bigger.
If you have a big difference in revenue generation from month to month, a good training program will result in big increases and steady income. The only reason, in fact, why anyone doesn’t train is because they fail to see the benefit. If everyone saw the “missing sales,” the whole world would be using daily sales training.
3. You can see a direct result of sales and business training.
FACT. If a training program fails, it’s because it doesn’t relate to specific, measurable performance objectives. If specific needs and objectives are established and training is modeled around them, the results can be measured and tracked.
Do a pre-training and post-training test and you’ll get a simple visual gauge that can show you the training’s knowledge-improvement results. What is your sales training ROI? You can know all sales achieved as a result of training, minus the cost of training. Don’t rely on feelings to assess the effectiveness of this expense. Measure it by doing some simple pre-training and post-training tests!
4. Good sales and business training is just a matter of “pumping people up.”
FICTION. Motivation isn’t the same as sales training. Yes, motivation is necessary and should be provided within a sales and business training program, but rah-rah meetings won’t last long without teaching the skill sets needed to close deals.
After a motivational session, de-motivating things such as high levels of rejection will still be a problem. The best way to improve long-term motivation is to acquire skills and successful sales techniques that you can use to boost your sales and your paycheck.
To get massive growth, great sales and business training is a must. The FACT is that nobody should worry about spending a little on sales training if they hope to make millions!
