Sales Training - How to "Get Dangerous Quickly"
With New Products and Services
by Alan Rigg
Published on this site: December 9th, 2005 - See
more articles from this month
In 2000 a computer distributor hired me to help them build
a software specialist sales team. The distributor had more
than 100 "generalist" salespeople, but these salespeople
were doing a poor job of selling software. The distributor's
management felt a team of specialists could help jump-start
growth in software sales.
This was a very interesting project for several reasons.
First, the distributor had sixteen software products
in its portfolio. Second, they couldn't afford to hire experienced
software salespeople. Instead, we needed to hire good consultative
salespeople and train them to sell all sixteen software products.
We also needed to write a business plan, get a budget approved,
hire six salespeople, train them to sell sixteen software
products, and have them working in the field... within 90
days.
Sound impossible? It sure seemed that way at first glance;
but, when I talked to the various software manufacturers,
I came to an important realization. All of the software manufacturers
were almost desperately eager for incremental opportunities.
If the new software salespeople could identify qualified opportunities,
the software manufacturers would be delighted to provide product
experts to help turn the opportunities into sales. So, all
the new software salespeople really needed to learn was how
to find and qualify opportunities.
I knew there was no way we could make our new salespeople
experts in sixteen software products in any reasonable time
frame. But, we could make them experts in the business
problems that the software products addressed. And, we
could provide them with tools they could use as "cheat
sheets" in the field to determine whether prospects had
those specific business problems, and if they did, to quntify the impact of the business problems.
There was just one challenge. The software manufacturers'
marketing epartments were all accustomed to delivering very
detailed, technical training. No matter how hard I tried,
I couldn't get them to understand the kind of abbreviated,
targeted training that I wanted my salespeople to receive. I even roughed
out a sample training tool (the very first "get dangerous
quickly" document) and sent it to each software manufacturer.
Despite repeated conversations and lots of good-faith efforts,
they just never "got it". So, I developed my team's
training tools and conducted most of the training myself.
What were the results? The six software salespeople helped
the distributor's existing 100 salespeople double software
sales during their first six months on the job! Unfortunately,
the "dot com bust" hit shortly thereafter, and the
software specialist team fell victim to deep headcount cuts.
This project taught me a very important lesson: salespeople
don’t need to be experts in specific products or services
to sell them successfully. They do need to be experts in the
business problems that the products or services can solve,
as well as how to find and qualify opportunities, and how
to leverage expert resources.
If you want to produce rapid sales results, redesign your
product/service training curriculums to help your salespeople
"get dangerous quickly". You’ll be glad you
did!
Sales performance expert Alan Rigg is the author of
How to Beat the 80/20 Rule in Selling: Why Most Salespeople
Don't Perform and What to Do About It. His company, 80/20
Sales Performance, helps business owners, executives, and
managers DOUBLE sales by implementing The Right Formula™
for building top-performing sales teams. For more information
and more FREE sales and sales management tips, visit http://www.8020salesperformance.com
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