June 1, 2006
Sales training is like show business
Being a trainer is like being in show business sometimes- you’re only as good as your last training seminar. Although some trainers may also have a secret desire to become movie stars and hell, even look like Angelina Jolie!
Oh yeah, back to training. Whenever I’m out there introducing myself, my company and my programs to new teams, there are people who have heard of TeleSmart and are excited that I’ll be there, and then there’s a very few who are not happy about me coming on board. Why? Perhaps a few reasons. Many could be completely unrelated to training and more related to their career goals, their standing within this team, the bad day they were having, etc. I usually don’t like reading feedback on my training because I tend to dwell on the 1 person out of hundreds that said I was arrogant or that my hair was too curly and I get wigged out by it. I can understand why some actors don’t like reading daily reviews on their performance.
The reason I got into training was because I had a useless training many years back and vowed that I would never sit in a room again for 3 days and have someone who had absolutely no idea about inside sales deliver it. So….. I opened up my own company and that’s what I’ve been doing ever since. I made a commitment to deliver relevant and strong content and create the special “aha” that I see or hear when I train.
In many ways, I prefer training to being a movie star– especially since I’d be stuck in Nimibia right now with a newborn:)
Ken Guerrero on November 9, 2006 @ 6:10 am
I agree with you. In my experience most of the sales training I went through in the corporate world was bad entertainment. As I moved up in the corporate world, I learned why. It goes back to flawed hiring practices.
The C-Level mindset in most large companies playing the numbers game is that “more salespeople make more sales.” So in an effort to make more sales they hire as many people as they can. In a lot of corporations it seemed to me the number one requirement for getting hired was the ability to fog a mirror.
So the reason most sales training is bad, is they have to take it down to the lowest common denominator. I worked for a couple of years at a Fortune 500 company in sales, and they sent me to the company training camp, and the brochure they gave me had a picture on the cover showing a guy presenting his business card, and the cover was titled “Learn to present your business card with confidence.”
I was the number one salesperson in the 11 state western division, and yet because “Corporate Rules” stated that after 90 days all new hires must mandatory sales training, I was sentenced to waste a week in Atlanta. I laughed when I saw the brochure and the five-day course outline. My boss was sympathetic, and urged me to suck it in and “play nice with the other children.”
I think as soon as the C-Level realizes you can only treat all people exactly the same when they are exactly the same will continue the spawning of bad sales training. Which is a good thing for outside training consultants like me.