After reading an article about teaching sales and mistakes that often occur in the teaching and learning process, opened my eyes to a new idea of sales and made it much more understandable to the learning process of sales.
Sales is something I have been told I would be good at and after sitting through classes already this semester I feel more interested in the potential sales field, but am skeptical of what sales training may look like and my execution in the practice. This article discusses two mistakes that can occur when teaching and being taught sales. The first is the instructor not understanding the difference between training and coaching. Training is defined as imparting knowledge and making sure that the individual or team of sales people knows what and how to execute. Where as coaching is making sure that the information has been accepted, it is understood, and it can be applied. Coaching is often practiced in order to improve a salesperson’s performance. Ultimately, coaching and training will help establish emotional intelligence in the salesperson and then the managers or coaches will be able to realize and notice the salespersons issues and provide guidance. When a salesperson does not apply what they have learned the article suggests re-teaching. When this happens it usually is a lack of buying into a concept rather than an issue of not understanding or not having the knowledge of it. This is when coaching is applied to get to the root of why the knowledge of the skill has not been applied. Ultimately, managers should know when it is appropriate to teach and when it is appropriate to train.
The second mistake in sales training and coaching is moving too fast and going from the bunny hill to black diamond and nothing in between. This happens by teaching a concept once or twice and then assuming its been understood and moving on only to leave the salesperson struggling to understand the next concept due to a lack of understanding from further lessons. The key is role playing and what they call drill skills to determine that your team has mastered these concepts. Once a skill has been mastered introduce a new one master that and continue.
All in all great sales managers are great teachers and coaches. This article allowed me to get a better understanding of what a good sales program and training should look like. It also gave me an understanding of how sales people are trained and how they ultimately can be very good at what they do, like any aspect of a job sales is another and can be applied to many different aspects of life and career paths.
BoweryJE22
The second mistake is one that seems to happen a lot because there is a difference between knowing what to do and actually being able to do it. All too often people, in sales or not, know what they should say or do but lack the ability to do so in the proper way. Role playing or simulations are exercises that could help people have a better understanding of the topic and build the skill set needed for the real life situation.