Why sales managers should never train their salespeople

As a training professional, when I take on a project to train inside sales teams, I spend time conducting an in-depth needs assessment. I ask questions about the sales structure, the team, their charter, their sales challenges, their sales cycle, their tools, etc. When I ask if they’ve received any type of training before, they usually give me the basics: Miller-Heiman, SPIN, Solution selling, and lots of role-plays with the managers.

Did you say role-playing with managers? Un-oh, now I know we’re in trouble.

It’s natural for sales managers to want to train their salespeople – especially since 95% of them used to be individual contributors. They feel pressured to ramp them up quickly and want to catch the increased revenue wave. But sometimes this just harms the team because some of what they are delivering is wrong, outdated, and simply not useful.  Here’s why:

1. Learning styles: Managers must understand that each person on their team has a unique way of learning and absorbing new information. Some get it immediately; but others need to understand it, watch it, and practice.

2. Watch this: Managers think that demonstrating is helping their team, but they are actually keeping them from learning. You do not want to clone your salespeople to be exact replicas of you.

3. Creating confusion: Managers always jump to helping with “closing tactics,” but that isn’t the best way to start. There’s a reason why salespeople don’t close. Backing it up to understand what happens from the beginning is way more helpful.

4. Your old school methods are extinct: Seriously, when managers teach teams the “If I can show you . . . would you buy today” headlock, they need to STOP. That is so outdated that their prospects will turn and run.

5. Forgetting about the buyer: When managers spend so much time on product knowledge and sales skills and incentives that feed the comp structure, they lose sight of the most important element – the customer. Today’s customer is a brand new breed. It’s time for managers to help salespeople adjust their sales tactics for this customer.