338 Not Doing Sales Training Is Stupid

<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-AU" xml:lang="EN-AU">I was chatting with a prospective client about a proposal I had submitted and he offered this feedback from one of his colleagues from the senior management team, “we don’t need to bring in trainers, we can use LinkedIn Learning instead”.  I was shocked to hear that from the lips of a senior leader.  Is this guy really a leader? I have used LinkedIn Learning myself and is cheap, but I found the quality is also quite various.  Individuals can shoot some training video content and LinkedIn Learning uploads it on to their platform.  The main problem is that self-paced online courses have a tremendously low completion rate of only 3%.  This leader may sign people up for online courses, be they LinkedIn Learning or from other online providers, but the outcomes won’t be there.  This is magnified in the case of sales training, because of the nature of the beast.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-AU" xml:lang="EN-AU">We teach Leadership, Communication, Presentations, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion and Sales. Sales is by far the hardest subject to teach.  The content isn’t the issue, it is the attitude of the people in the class.  It seems to me very few people in sales have ever had any formal training or even read a book on the subject.  They are in sales and have cobbled together a sales methodology from their bosses or colleagues or through trial and error and they are fixed on their way of doing things.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-AU" xml:lang="EN-AU">This results in a patchwork of sorts, where they get certain parts of the sales process to work for them but there are big gaps still, because they are doing things in a hit and miss fashion.  In Japan, we find there are key parts of the sales process skill set, which are severely underdone. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-AU" xml:lang="EN-AU">Having said that, generally speaking, building rapport is well executed because that is a component of the culture.  There i