Why Sales Training Doesn't Work

Why is sales as a profession and function, losing ground?

Dave Stein on his popular blog site states that “the root causes of sales ineffectiveness are clear. There is plenty of sound advice about how to fix the problem. There is a proven path.  The answers are there for everyone to see. There are companies you can read about and observe that have achieved sales excellence”

By way of background he adds that;

• Sales training has been around for more than 100 years.  Yet every year, new approaches appear with the promise of being “The Silver Bullet.”  Old approaches—even those that are relevant to fixing the problem—are labeled “old-school,” and rejected. 

• On Amazon.com there are 29, 469 books under the category of “How to Sell.”  In “Sales Techniques” there are 11, 194.

• He is personally tracking 80 blogs about selling.  There are many more.  Dozens provide solid advice.

• There are several hundred sales training firms ESR is aware of, yet there is no single one or two that dominate, as you would see in any other industry.

• In 2008, U.S. corporations spent around $6 billion on sales performance improvement, yet sales productivity (pre-recession) was down.

• The number of free webinars focused on improving sales capabilities is at an all-time high, and increasing.  So are free articles, eBooks and white papers.

• Reports, statistics, surveys, research and opinion related to sales ineffectiveness are abound.  Here are just a few sources: CSO Insights, Forrester, Sirius Decisions, The Sales Executive Council, Selling Power, Sales and Marketing Management magazine, most of the major sales training companies, and of course, ESR.  You can find anything you need to know about the subject among these sources.

• There continue to be emerging movements with value propositions focused on sales performance improvement.  The latest is Sales 2.0.  Add the new online social media to the list.

• There is no shortage of associations and groups focused on sales performance: 

This is all true however there are 354,714 books on dieting. According to the Medical Journal 65 percent of America’s adults are overweight and 31 percent of adults are obese and at risk for chronic diseases. The root causes are clear. There is plenty of sound advice about how to fix the problem. There is a proven path.  The answers are there for everyone to see. 

The reality is the problem has nothing to do with the sales industry or advice, it has everything to do with the frailties of the human condition. Our expectations are that if we put 20 people in a room and give them training in a methodology or a technique they will change how they currently perform. But that’s like putting a personal trainer in the room to teach people how to run a marathon and then expecting that you have a company of marathon runners.

There are many reasons why must of the $6Bn spent annually on sales training is wasted. Here are my top 7. Another way to look at this list is to say ‘these are the real issues I need to address with my sales improvement process in order for it to be successful’

Reason #1. When confronted with a problem we distort reality

(Discounts are an internal mechanism by which we minimise or maximise an aspect of reality, in ourselves or others. Discounting involves thinking which is inconsistent or distorts reality)

There are four levels of discounting 

Level 1: We discount the existence of a problem (“I’m having lots of meetings, I’ve never been busier”)

Level 2: We discount the significance of the problem - (“that’s just how it is in Sales, you have to give prospect’s a lot of information to educate them”)

Level 3: We discount the changeability of the problem - (“That’s how we’ve always done it, you can’t teach an old dog new tricks”)

Level 4: We discount our personal ability to carry out the change - (“I’m comfortable with doing it this way”)

In order to address any business challenge we need to;

1. acknowledge the existence of the problem, 
2. acknowledge that the problem is significant and worthy of our time
3. believe that the problem can be fixed
4. believe that we can actually change

If you want to see evidence of this, just look at want has transpired in the financial markets of late. Where there signs of a problem 24 months ago - absolutely. Were they ignored? Was the significance downplayed? 

In our industry, most sales training is sold to Sales VP’s/Directors who can clearly see there is a sales productivity problem. For them it’s significant. They want to believe that the situation can be changed. They lack the personal ability to affect the change, so they outsource this element of the process to a sales trainer.

Then the sales trainer shows up to a classroom of people who continue to discount at one of the four stages of the process. They either don’t believe that they need to change, that change is necessary, that change is possible or that they don’t have the ability to make the cut.

Why would you set about solving a problem you don’t acknowledge that you have? 

But how can a sales rep ignore the evidence? He’s struggling to make quote, he’s uncomfortable calling high, discussion money, asking for a decision, etc., and yet he doesn’t see that he has a problem?

This brings us to insight number 2

Reason #2: The mind will deny that which it cannot accept

Psychologists refer to this as cognitive dissonance. This is the feeling of uncomfortable tension which comes from holding two conflicting thoughts in the mind at the same time.

Dissonance is often strong when we believe something about ourselves and then do something against that belief. For example, if I believe that I am a great salesperson (maybe I had a great year last year) and now I’m struggling to make my numbers, then the discomfort I feel as a result is called cognitive dissonance.

In the context of this article, if I believe that I’m a great closer (I only have to believe it, it doesn’t have to be true) and then a sales trainer comes along and tells me that I should be acting differently, I am confronted with two conflicting thoughts;

Either I am not as good/effective as I think I am or 

the sales trainer doesn’t understand my world/culture/industry, etc. 

The net result is excuse making, finger pointing and blaming, or in other words a failure to take personal responsibility.

The is also a widely held perception that training is for under performers and that’s not a group that my ego takes kindly to being a member of.

Reason #3: Confirmation Bias

Confirmation bias occurs when we selectively notice or focus upon evidence which tends to support the things we already believe or want to be true while ignoring that evidence which would serve to disconfirm those beliefs or ideas.

Last year, I hit my target and made ‘Club’ (evidence I will use)

The large order that helped me reach my target came out of the blue (evidence I choose to ignore)

This is related to reason 4......

Insight 4: Self Serving Bias

This is our tendency to take credit for success (self-enhancing bias) and deny any responsibility for failure (self-protective bias). This helps to protect our ego. It also enables us to confirm that we are meeting our goals. 

To see this in action, you only have to look at the average Sales Rep’s Resume. There you will find a list of all the big deals they closed and the amount of revenue they brought into the business. They usually leave out the fact that some of these deals fell into their laps, some they closed despite themselves, some relied on the support of other colleagues.

What about the deals that they lost? That’s an easy one

• Economy is down
• Products are inferior
• Marketing support is poor
• Technical support dropped the ball

Sound familiar?

Failure is perhaps the greatest enemy of the ego and will go to extraordinary lengths to protect itself. Some self handicappers, as they are know, exploit the self-serving bias in another way. In self handicapping the brain makes sure that it has a non-threatening excuse for failure, prepared in advance. If you can blame your poor performance on your lack of training for example, then your self image can remain firmly intact.

Reason #5: You’re not willing to pay the price

We live in world of instant gratification. Instant coffee, fast food, priority check in, etc. We’ve been conditioned to expect results now. 

This frailty in the human condition was exposed Walter Michel of Stanford who created a simple test of the ability of people to control impulses and delay gratification. Children were taken one at a time into a room with a one-way mirror. They were shown a marshmallow. The experimenter told them he had to leave and that they could have the marshmallow right then, but if they waited for the experimenter to return from an errand, they could have two marshmallows. One marshmallow was left on a table in front of them. Some children grabbed the available marshmallow within seconds of the experimenter leaving. Others waited up to twenty minutes for the experimenter to return. In a follow-up study (Shoda, Mischel, & Peake, 1990), children were tested at 18 years of age and comparisons were made between the third of the children who grabbed the marshmallow (the "impulsive") and the third who delayed gratification in order to receive the enhanced reward ("impulse controlled").

The third of the children who were most impulsive at four years of age scored an average of 524 verbal and 528 math. The impulse controlled students who scored 610 verbal and 652 mathematics! This astounding 210 point total score difference on the SAT was predicted on the basis of a single observation at four years of age!

As a result of the expectation of instant gratification, the sales improvement industry has responded with quick fix answers, which leads us to reason #6......

Reason #6: The idiot’s self-help guide to how-to books for dummies – made easy”

The problem with this is that the quick fix simply does not work. It never has, it never will.

In the early 1970s, the British Comedy troupe ‘Monty Python’ offered the following advice to you, if you wanted to be the person who would “rid the world of all known diseases”: 

“Go to college and study really hard to become a doctor. Once you’re a doctor, specialise in diseases and do really well at it. Then, once the medical profession begins to recognise you, just tell them what to do to sort it all out.” 

It’s very silly but it encapsulates perfectly what I don’t like about the profusion of How to/Self help/Do-it-yourself sources of advice.  

I would be cautious about rubbishing all the blogs, books and articles. I participate actively in that market myself.  However, there are common factors among a lot of them that are worth challenging. Have you ever noticed how so many of the people who make money out of the internet made it by writing books or creating websites telling you how to ‘make money out of the internet’? 

Most relevant to what we’re talking about is the fact that so much of the advice in this area offer to ‘make things easy’ or claim to be ‘the simple way’ to do something. Some of it is written by people who have never strayed beyond the borders of that land we call theory. People who have one, linear solution to an issue which, if challenged by the vagaries of reality, would crumble. Others are written by people with experience in one particular facet of the issue. Others still are written by the ‘I’ve been there so I know’ brigade. But how many of them are written by people who consciously went out there to address the central issue themselves? How many of them come out and say ‘Selling success is a hard slog, here’s an effective way to slog’. 

It’s not all the fault of the industry. It is, after all, responding to the demands of the market, which wants seminar format interventions, online training, etc., - They want “the quick win” as it was once described to me. 

Insight 7: Peer Pressure

Peers influence your life, even if you don't realize it, just by spending time with you. You learn from them, and they learn from you. It's only human nature to listen to and learn from other people in your social or professional group.

Few people want to stand out and be different. So, if your peers don’t want to make the effort to change, then, whether you like it or not, this will have a profound affect on you. Either the force to conform will win (and you maintain the status quo) or you break free of the pack and risk the relationship you have with your colleagues. Either way there is an inevitable loss, a price to pay.