It is not new that the courses and training of “Sales Techniques” are among the most popular for professionals in the area.
Despite this apparent success, in fact they fulfill what promise?
Learning “Sales Techniques” will make your salespeople become sales champions? Or at least that they have a justifiable improvement in their results?
Our proposal in this article is to understand how this type of training can contribute to the results of the team, as well as in what situations it can be useful and the associated whys.
What is a “Sales Techniques” course or training?
It may seem unnecessary and redundant to know such an answer and in fact it is.
However, the question aims to go deeper into the expectations that companies and managers have when sending their salespeople to a course or training aimed at “teaching” sales techniques.
In general, something like “cake recipe” is expected. This is one of the most common mistakes in Sales!
That is, my salesperson will learn which ingredients to use and in which measures, as well as the steps to obtain an excellent final product.
Even in cooking, 10 different people can get 10 different cakes, all following the same recipe.
In Sales, it’s no different.
A course or training in sales, it’s not the Holy Grail and it won’t produce sales champions and possibly won’t even make much difference to your results.
At least most of the time and here comes the question…
Why don’t sales techniques work?
Before we answer the above question specifically and directly, it must be said that yes, sales techniques do work , but within certain scenarios.
But that’s a subject for later.
First, let’s start answering the focus question of this topic, asking you other questions :
Do you believe you will make amazing and equal dishes what Alex Atala or Jefferson Rueda serve in their restaurants, just by taking a cooking course?
Do you think it is possible to paint works of art like those made by Michelangelo and Renoir, just by participating in a cooking course? painting?
Or still, being a Formula 1 champion or having the performance that Ayrton Senna had or Lewis Hamilton had, taking a driving course?
Naturally we mention names who have excelled or stand out in their fields. People with above average talents and abilities. However, the results that they and any less “privileged” people obtain are not just the result of training, however good it may be.
Of course, natural aptitudes can favor and make the path shorter or easier, but invariably success – in any measure – is the result of a process, which is often long and the result of a lot of work and dedication.
More than that, it is not possible to skip steps.
In other words, you won’t get the best results – or maybe no results – in sophisticated cooking techniques, if you don’t know basic principles and fundamentals in the kitchen. The same can be said in terms of painting techniques, if you don’t understand why there is an immense variety of brushes. Nor will he be able to attack the zebra in a chicane, without understanding how the center of gravity and grip of the car in hand are transferred.
Transferring the analogies and comparisons to reality. of Sales professionals, there are the same particularities and they often involve some or several of the following situations:
1. Motivation
Not only in Sales, but in many areas, goals and sometimes not even reasonable results are not achieved, due to lack of motivation.
Sometimes you don’t have motivation and sometimes you can’t, because you don’t like what you do.
Unfortunately this is an area in which there are high rates of people who aren’t, but are salespeople, simply because it usually doesn’t require more than good communication skills and that is often confused with someone who is able to speak, which is not the same thing.
Natural salespeople, as well as cooks, artists and pilots, they can receive external stimuli to increase their motivation, but they tend to be naturally motivated by the challenges of their activity, as they enjoy what they do!
More than that, in addition to the sales goals, they have their own personal goals that invariably go hand in hand with those that their managers propose to them. They know that they are one of the few professionals capable of making their own salaries.
2. Profile
The profile of the professional, which has a lot to do with the above aspect, is also decisive.
It all starts with admission. When hiring the right people for vacancies in the commercial area, determining an adequate set of hard skills and soft skills, will make the knowledge / techniques passed in courses and training better assimilated and applied.
The person who works in the area, in addition to the already mentioned good communication skills, needs to be empathetic, persistent, flexible, astute, organized, updated, among other characteristics.
But contrary to the paradigms of the past , it is necessary to know how to understand the reasons for these characteristics.
For example, flexibility is required both to know how to adapt to different types of customers and to the trends that arise as a result of new technologies.
Salesmen in the past were real dinosaurs, when you think about how they clung to unique habits and ways of doing things. Times are different and those who enter this activity today need to be able to adapt and incorporate the new in their methods.
3. Human factor
Sales occur from the interaction between people. Among all the professionals in a company, salespeople are the ones who generally have the greatest and best opportunities to relate to the company’s customers.
How to suppose that a certain “sales technique” will produce the same result in a Baby Boomer customer and a Centennial (generation Z)?
Even two consumers of the same generation can have totally different behaviors.
The salesperson must be able to identify the peculiarities of each customer, as well as their needs, desires and expectations, which can vary enormously, as is typical of human nature, and from that, discern what is applicable and what is not.
In the same way that the cook knows when the preparation requires more time in the oven than the recipe indicates, or the pilot when he realizes that the tire grip allows him to make the same curve at a higher speed than the previous lap.
4. Practice
In the examples of the cook and the pilot, one aspect is essential – the practice.
Trainings should be called that, when in fact they do with for trainees to practice. Those that are not, just deserve to be called courses.
There is no human activity that can be exercised without practice and that produces optimal results. Except by chance, but which are exceptional situations and not the rule.
It is for no other reason that medical professionals undergo two years of residency or because in other areas, they do supervised internships and they are trainees.
Practice also produces experience and more learning. You can see what works and what doesn’t, as well as discover new ways of doing things.
5. Time
The time factor we refer to is that necessary to produce the results.
There is a lot of immediacy in companies and especially in the commercial area, where sales need to happen and always in increasing volumes
But there is also the time needed for change. It is known that a new habit is consolidated with repetition and that, in turn, results in the practice and experience of the item immediately above.
It is common that due to this immediacy, one puts oneself aside the new learnings – the sales techniques learned – and if you go back to doing what and how it was always done and that good or bad, you know what results to expect.
6 . Open courses
Open courses are those in which there are people from different companies in the same class.
Each one has different levels of knowledge, experiences, realities , markets of operation.
This type of course is usually the one that provides the least results, because the facilitator / instructor has to try to serve everyone, being more generalist and, therefore, rarely or even none, bringing applications according to the reality of each participant.
Here too, the time factor ends up influencing, but because normally the workload is insufficient.
7. Applicability
Are the concepts seen applicable?
This factor is influenced by a number of variables, such as the fact that it is open and, therefore, approach very generalist, due to the human factor, as well as the conditions and reality of the company and/or the market in which it operates, as well as internal policies and processes, which we will see later.
In other words, Does the salesperson have the ideal environment seen in the course, in his daily life?
8. Means or end?
What few people realize, especially those who are, but are not salespeople, is to differentiate between means and end.
Explaining better, and those who already have some experience in the area know, sales are the result of a series of well-planned and executed actions, but which essentially do not aim to sell, but to produce increasing levels of well-being.
The subtlety of the question is one of the biggest challenges of any salesperson and that lies in delivering customer satisfaction in exchange for their money.
A woman doesn’t buy clothes. She buys beauty, elegance, admiration, seduction and a series of other abstract nouns that in the end mean that she feels great and satisfied for having spent what she spent!
The longer this list is. of sensations and the more intense they are, the more willing she will be to buy.
Just like someone who buys car insurance, they are paying for peace of mind and the certainty that their assets will be guaranteed and that in If you don’t want to take advantage of the service, everything happens with the minimum bureaucracy and as quickly as possible.
If not, I’ll look for another company.
Therefore, sales techniques do not serve to sell, as contradictory as this statement may seem.
Sales techniques are to produce big and spontaneous smiles on your customers’ faces and because they are feeling great, they they give you without any heartache, your hard-earned money!
It’s fair for them and the seller.
9. Professionalism
At this point, we refer to those who are salespeople and those who, for lack of a job in the area that they actually like, are salespeople.
Unfortunately, a negative and justified stereotype has been created, of that person with a folder full of papers or in the case of those who have assimilated the digital transformation and use a tablet or notebook, or even a smartphone, but in both cases, it takes time to find what they need, they often resort to memory, don’t meet deadlines, are late in visits, resist using the sales funnel and understanding how important the prospecting phase is.
Sorry to those who in to some extent they recognized themselves in this situation, but like all areas, the market requires new behaviors.
The salesperson who intends to deliver results, needs to have diverse knowledge, be in constant improvement, master new technologies, to be part of the internal processes, to leave aside the “jeitinho” and to have standard operating regulations, among many conducts.
If not, many of the techniques will be just interesting theories for him, but of little practical effect
10. Other Factors
The last reason on our list of reasons why sales techniques often do not produce the intended results has to do with the company.
Does it fulfill the basic roles in relation to its customers, such as quality, price, service, after-sales?
When we talk about applicability (7th reason), we We also talked about that.
It is not uncommon that despite a professional job and the salesperson’s commitment to apply everything he has learned, he bumps into factors external to his work and that depend on the company and its performance.
It is difficult to keep the customer satisfied, if the delivered product breaks frequently and when the customer has to resort to assistance, it does not do its job or even does not exist.
When does a sales techniques course work?
If we have been happy with everything we have presented so far, it is quite likely that you already have the answers and that is to ensure that the reasons that make a course ineffective do not happen.
But it also involves a lot of the responsible managers.
Starting with the Human Resources department, when determining the profile ideal and that goes well beyond being dynamic and communicative, accepting challenges and other “qualities” commonly seen in job advertisements in the area.
HR in conjunction with the commercial manager must be more careful in determining what content is necessary for the training and improvement of salespeople, as well as methodologies and teaching resources are used.
In a later stage, managers and supervisors of Sales, they need to play their role and that it is more than demanding that the sales corresponding to the goals be made.
As leaders, it is up to them to ensure both the applicability in terms of the environment of the company (resources, policies, product / service, etc.), as well as whether the professionals are making an effort to practice the concepts.
Finally, training or courses are not the lifeline when sales fall or when they are insufficient.
Before applying any technique, it is necessary to master the fundamentals and basic questions. It’s not difficult nowadays, and in the role of consumers, to enter a store, be served, pay and leave and not know the name of the seller and he doesn’t know ours!
How can it not be Alex Atala, Michelangelo or Ayrton Senna, without knowing respectively what a roux is, how to handle a spatula and what is the role of the differential in driving.
Conclusion
Courses or training in sales techniques can be great or a total waste of time and resources for the company and the seller, depending on some factors.
