Is sales training an expense or an investment? The answer depends on what kind of training and how effective the training is. Competent professional sales training will help companies improve in all of the following areas:

1. More effective management of complex, big dollar deals: Sales training can help you win the big ones by gaining a better understanding of the politics of larger organizations. Learn how to successfully navigate situations involving multiple decision makers, multiple departments, outside consultants, committees and unexpected participants.
2. A shorter selling cycle: Develop strong mutual agreements with prospective clients early in the selling cycle that define a step-by-step plan that will bring the process to an outcome within a mutually acceptable time frame.
3. Higher comfort level calling at the “C” level: Develop a selling readiness tool kit that quickly helps you establish credibility at the highest levels. Truly understanding your prospective client, their challenges and their vision is far more powerful than demonstrating your product knowledge or its wizardry.
4. Weeding our non-buyers earlier: Your time and your company’s resources are extraordinarily valuable! Your prospect must earn them. Learn how to get prospects to sell you on their need and commitment.
5. More effective prospecting: Utilize a fresh, non-traditional approach to capture your prospect’s interest and imagination on the first call. Then, quickly help them discover why it is in their best interest to invite you in.
6. Less discounting: Price is never the real issue! You will gain the confidence and skill to shift the buyer’s focus from the price of your solution to: (a) the cost of not implementing your solution, and (b) their return on investment. If your customer really has the conviction that they’ll get a significantly better return per invested dollar by going with you, they’ll be glad to pay more!
7. Higher per sale average: Your will gain the confidence, patience and control required to do a thorough needs analysis before proposing any solution. This honest, comprehensive approach maximizes each opportunity by ensuring no money is left on the table, and that customers are totally satisfied.
8. Better relationships with prospects and clients: Create a climate of trust and respect through the utilization of a system where every conversation differentiates you from the stereotypical, ego-centered, pushy sales person. Experience the satisfaction of having your clients say, “Not only does he/she listen to me, they truly understand me.”
9. Higher closing ratios in competitive situations: Through your superior knowledge of your prospect’s needs and the precise execution of mutual agreements you will differentiate your solution, and yourself, from your competition.
10. Lower cost per sale: Precious resources previously wasted on non-buyers in unwarranted proposals, demos, on-sites, trials, and prototypes are now more productively allocated.
11. More effective negotiations: Bring about successful outcomes while making no unilateral concessions. Never give anything away unless you’re getting something comparable, or of greater value in return.
12. More effective team selling: Experience the power of a selling team where every member is 100% bought-in to the exact same selling model. Every member always knows where they are in the process and what their exact role is.
13. More accurate forecasting: By achieving meaningful milestones throughout the selling cycle, the projected probability of a deal coming to fruition is within a significantly smaller margin of error. In addition, mechanisms are installed to protect the integrity of the overall forecasting system.
14. Higher activity level per rep: “The greatest motivator for a selling professional is winning”, says Tom Peters, author of, In Search of Excellence. Fresh new tactics and strategies that really work deliver the kind of wins and successes that create a ground swell of excitement and activity.
15. Better internal communication: The consensus gained through effective implementation of an integrated, company-wide selling system and the common language to describe it, ensures every internal conversation between members of the team - managers, reps, sales engineers, consultants, etc. - is more precise and efficient.
16. An overall increase in moral: Optimum morale is attained when your people feel good about and believe in: themselves, their company, their product and their market place. One of the most important benefits of successful implementation an effective sale process is sustainable improvement in all of these areas.

If you would like to improve in these areas may we suggest the August 6th Jump Start Sales TeleClass.

Navarre, FL, December 11, 2006 – Are you a high-performance salesperson? Do you also have a desire to help other salespeople break away from mediocrity? Do you want to be a part of something that is more fun, more profitable, and more fulfilling? You’re gonna like the New School Selling Certified Trainer Program™

A world of rarified earnings and increased personal satisfaction is waiting. We have an opportunity for a select few to learn, teach, and perfect the practices and methodologies of New School Selling invented by Steve Clark.

You’ll learn the deep secrets not available on Steve’s CDs that will make you a better performer in your day job. (And, yes, you can keep your day job for as long as you wish.) We want your safety net securely under you until your income as a Certified New School Sales Trainer™ allows your current company to pay you to train your successor.

To get an idea of the qualifications, meet our latest New School Trainer: Philip Hamilton, President of Hamilton Business Group, Inc. Since 1997, HBG has provided a variety of services that helps clients to (1) sell or buy businesses; (2) create wealth by increasing the value of their businesses; and (3) understand the value of their business or targeted businesses.

Phil holds a post graduate MBA from Indiana University, and has over 1,600 hours of continuing professional education in business valuation and fraud. A very busy guy, he has published in professional journals, is a member of several professional associations, has taught professionally, and won numerous industry awards.

Despite being president of the company and having a string of impressive initials after his name (CBA, CM&AA, CPA/ABV, BVAL, CIA, CFI, CFE), Phil was restless and ready to take his career to another level.

“We are looking to certify trainers who have similar drive and outlook as Phil Hamilton. We look forward to helping you see the hungry faces cry out for more and willingly, happily, pay you,” says Steve Clark, President of New School Selling.

Make 2007 the year you commit yourself to real financial freedom by becoming a New School Certified Trainer. To learn more about New School Selling, the, other sales-related courses and products, please contact Steve Clark today.

Contact:

Steve Clark
800-250-3146
www.newschoolselling.com

New School Selling is a business development consulting firm that specializes in helping businesses grow sales revenues and profits. They have developed a series of seminars and training tools for salespeople, sales managers, and groups that combine scientific knowledge, great people savvy, and provide a sales methodology based on integrity.

According to hiring expert Dave Kurlan, only 15% of sales candidates that are tested by his company pass the pre-hire screening test, and are recommended for hire. These numbers are in line with Herb Greenberg’s numbers that state that only 20% of the people now selling has the emotional and psychological talents to be top performers. Both of these numbers are in line with the Pareto Principle.

In my study of sales, I have found that the normal bell shaped curve applies to sales organizations. This normal distribution can be understood by identifying the four kinds of performers within an organization. These four can be labeled A’s, B’s, C’s and D’s.

For training purposes these groups can be divided into two groups: The Trainables and The Non-Trainables.

The Trainables are: A’s who are highly productive, motivated to grow and trainable and C’s who are non-productive, but motivated and trainable.

The Non-Trainables are: B’s who are highly productive, but are comfortable with their current level of income, have no motivation to grow, and are not receptive to training, and D’s who are not productive, not motivated, and have no potential for growth.

If we apply the normal bell shaped curve to a sales organization, we will find about 20% of the sales organization are A’s, 60% are B’s and C’s and 20% are D’s.

From a training standpoint, the only salepeople it makes sense to train are the A’s and the C’s who want to become A’s – usually about half of this C group. The B’s are not candidates for training unless and until they become uncomfortable with their current level of success. The D’s are not trainable and should be replaced.

Using these numbers, on average, only about half of any sales organization, the A’s and half of the C’s will benefit from training.

When we work with companies to improve the sales process we usually find that improving the sales process involves a two pronged approach of identifying and training the trainables and implementing a more effective recruiting and hiring process to replace the non productive, non-trainables.

Good Selling

Steve Clark

PS Check out the free “Prospecting to Fill the Pipeline” TeleClass on Oct. 23rd.

North American Companies spend about two billion dollars each year on sales training hoping for an improvement in their bottom line. Most of the time they don’t get it.

In 1998, according to the American Society for Training and Development, only nineteen (19%) of people who took a training course received any kind of sustained performance improvement. There have been numerous articles in many publications, which confirm that premise.

Why?

Because they try to put “new wine in an old wineskin” thinking that it will work. What they get is the same old results. Hang with me and let me explain what I mean. When I was in graduate school I was taught that the purpose of education was to produce behavioral change in the learner. Sadly, most of the sales training being conducted today does not produce any permanent skill enhancement or behavioral change in the participants.

Why is this?

Most training being taught today is information based. That is it is presented from an intellectual or factual point of view. The shortcoming of this type of learning methodology is that the human brain forgets most new information that it is exposed to rather quickly. In fact, psychologists tell us that we consciously forget 95% of what we hear at a seminar within twenty-one days of hearing it. Yes, we heard it and we intellectually understood it but we didn’t retain it and we certainly can’t execute or implement it a month later. The flaw is in the learning model not in the content.

But we are an instant gratification society. We want to hear it once or twice and then expect to be an expert at it. That is not the way the brain works.

Think about how you learned the multiplication tables. You practiced it over and over and over again. You did drills and flash cards for weeks and weeks until new neuropathways were created chemically and electrically in your brain. The same thing with learning to ride a bike. You did not one day take a lesson and then hop on a bike and take off. Like most of us you had to practice and fall down and repeat the process over and over until one day your neurological system “got it” and then you owned the skill for life.

Selling is the same way except it is more difficult than learning to ride a bike or memorizing the multiplication tables. Companies, managers and sales people all want to short cut the process. They want an easy, fast, painless method that does not exist and they continue to be seduced by the promise of the one-day miracle seminar or the magic book or tape. The result is that the sales profession has become inundated with hacks, incompetents, product peddlers and pitchmen who aren’t much better than the elixir con men who once operated out of the back of a covered wagon.