Moments ago, I experienced an intense flashback. Well, it was as intense a flashback as a guy who spends most of his time in Class-A office space can get. Anyway, let me explain. Ever the believer in personal and professional development, I attended an intensive, four-day leadership workshop several months ago in Wilmington, NC.
Several years ago, I met a man who sold insurance. He handed me a Round-Tuit. You may have seen one of these things. It's a wooden coin that says, "Tuit" on it. Aside from being a clever gimmick for a man selling insurance, it provides an important lesson for the rest of us. A Round-Tuit is of those things – a project, an email, a phone call, a conversation – that you’ve been putting off.
“Give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.”
~ Lao Tzu
What does this rather overused Chinese proverb have to do with sales process or sales techniques? Let me explain:
Is Sales Training a wise investment in your sales team or a complete waste of money? Well. That all depends. Hiring an outsourced sales training provider to conduct a sales training initiative can either be one of the most successful investments you can make in your sales force, or it can be an enormous – and embarrassing – waste of your company’s time, money and resources.
This post is the second in a series by Mark Ippolito. Mark is a Sr. Manager with Lenati and leads Lenati’s Sales Optimization Practice.
Every now and then, we get requests for an outline for a sales training manual. We usually respond in the same way:
What prompted your interest in a sales training manual?
Typically, it's because someone told someone else to come up with some sales training.
The other day, I was talking to one of our sales trainers who told me about a great conversation he had with one of his clients about the distinction between customer satisfaction and customer loyalty. It seems members of their sales team were confusing the two. It made me realize that I might be doing the same thing, too.
Editor's Note: Every now and then, you run across someone with true, unadulterated passion for sales. Robert Terson is certainly one of those people. I enjoy reading his site SellingFearlessly.com, and am excited that he's written a post especially for us here at The Sales Leader Blog. Here it is.
There's a myth that the grass is greener just on the other side of the hill. In sales jobs, the myth is that there's a better sales job somewhere else. "If I can just find a better place," we tell ourselves, "I'll be happier, with a bigger salary, and less stressed." I'm here to bust that myth. I believe that any sales job has positives and negatives.
We write a lot about pre-call planning here on the Sales Leader Blog. The reasons are many, but mostly because there’s immediate payoff. Put simply, if you prepare for a sales call, you increase your chance of success.
At the most recent Sales 2.0 conference, there was reference made to the number of salespeople in the United States.
