by Hank Trisler
As a sales trainer, a question I'm sometimes asked is, "Are you one of those motivational speakers?"
The answer is, "Probably not. Motivation occurs internally and is not something one person normally does to another. If I were to motivate your people, what, specifically, would you like me to motivate them to do?"
"Go out and just sell the hell out of my Doogers. Man, we're up to our hips in Doogers and I need my sales critters to make 'em go away, pronto."
Well, I suppose that would be dandy if that's the way it worked, but if you inspire people without some clear direction of what they are to do, they just get all pumped up and run out in the parking lot looking for something to kill. Can't find their car.
Before I begin to design any sales training program, I need the clear answers to four basic questions. When, and only when, the management team and I are in agreement on these questions am I able to help them direct their people. The questions are:
1. What are your people doing well now? The hippocratic oath tells doctors, "If you can do no good, at least do no harm. " Good advice for those of us attempting to increase performance levels.
As a young man, I inherited a sales team heavily reliant on "canned pitches." They had every word memorized and lists of objections with the answers thereto. I HATE canned pitches. I think they sound phony and make one look like the negative perception people hold of salespeople. Accordingly, I banned the use of canned pitches. I told them to go forth and ask intelligent questions and offer logical solutions to the customers, based the their perceived needs.
It was a blood bath. I abolished a system that was working, though not as well as I might have desired, but working nevertheless. Without it, they were lost.
2. What should they be doing better? Let's focus on the specific activities of the sales force. Do they need more prospects? Need to do a better job of need finding? Need better questions? Should they be more persistent in asking for the order?
3. What should they be doing that they are not doing at all? This is fairly straightforward. This is probably what management has been haranguing them about for years. List the desired specific behaviors.
4, Why aren't they doing those things now? Could they do them if their lives depended on it? Pay close attention, as this is where your training exercise is created. If they don't know how to do the desired activities, education is the key. More often, there are other reasons than lack of knowledge. They know how, but they just don't want to do them, or they want to do other things more.
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