- March 17, 2025
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
I believe that “24” was the best Television series I have ever watched. Although it ran from 2003-2010, long before streaming was a thing, no show was better situated for streaming and binge watching than “24.”
My wife and I watched it for the first time a few years ago but we recently watched all eight seasons again. It was amazing to both of us that despite how much we loved “24” the first time we watched it, we didn’t remember any of it as we watched it the second time. None of it! If you missed my March 14 article on Sales Cringe – my first in over a month – that will explain why we had the time to rewatch “24.”
If we can’t remember anything from eight engaging, memorable, action-packed seasons of a suspenseful show like “24”, how can we expect salespeople to remember, never mind apply and execute, what they learned from comparatively mundane sales training, especially if it didn’t take place this year?
The truth is that even the most media-rich, entertaining, engaging, memorable sales training can’t come close to holding people’s attention when compared to a series like “24.”
That’s why it is imperative that companies follow my top 10 rules for a successful sales training and revenue growth:
- Sales training must be ongoing – not quarterly, not yearly, and not when things go south. Training should occur continuously on a bi-weekly basis.
- Regardless of company size, the Owner, President or CEO must SHOW their commitment to sales training to demonstrate the critical nature of the training to all participants.
- Senior Sales Leadership must be visible and participate in all sales training to show that the training, and more importantly, application and execution of the training, is not optional.
- Sales Managers must be trained to properly and consistently coach their salespeople to the content of the training. For sales training to become sales improvement, the sales managers are the glue that hold everything together.
- Salespeople who don’t buy-in should be replaced if they are also guilty of not meeting or exceeding quota.
- Sales Training should never be the flavor of the month, where different sales training providers are brought in each year to expose salespeople to various viewpoints, approaches and options. It should not be akin to exposing high school students taking elective courses in Spanish, French, Latin, or German. This is a horrible practice for sales! Salespeople must live, breath and master a single sales process and methodology. One! There are many to choose from and most of the options are not complete sales processes. Don’t make the mistake of choosing a sales process because you’ve heard a lot about it. Stay away from SPIN, Challenger, Strategic Selling, and others like them that do not provide a cradle to grave sales process. If you have not previously watched this 10-minute video about the different sales processes/methodologies, I urge you to watch it now. The main character in “24” is special agent Jack Bauer. He would say, “DO IT NOW!!!”
- Role playing is an essential component of successful sales training. Role play is the ONLY way to demonstrate what a good conversation is supposed to sound like in every stage of the sales process and in every scenario that your salespeople will encounter.
- When you identify the proper sales training partner and content, know that the training is only as good as the trainer. You wouldn’t want a surgeon doing your surgery if their only experience came from what they learned from a book, PowerPoint or video. The same is true for sales trainers. It should be a hard NO to sales training “facilitators” who lack real world sales experience and success. You don’t want a teacher for something this important, you want a battle-hardened sales professional who has been in the trenches and actually done what they are training your salespeople to do. How can an academic type role play with your most successful, senior salespeople?
- There are several ways to deliver sales training, including face-to-face (the most costly and least effective), to virtual (the most efficient and effective), to online self-directed (the least effective and costly), and my favorite, blended learning, a combination of the options. Always choose blended learning!
- The appropriate amount of time for virtual sales training is one to two hours per session. Salespeople will have a difficult time staying focused and engaged if it runs any longer.
We haven’t discussed the actual content, which should focus on areas in which your salespeople need the most improvement. A Sales Team Evaluation can accurately identify each competency where your salespeople have room for improvement and course content can be designed from there.
Most companies have significant room for improvement in the following 7 competencies:
- Consultative Seller (Listening, Asking Questions, Creating Urgency)
- Value Seller
- Qualifier
- Closer
- Hunter
- Reaching Decision Makers
- Authenticity
Considering that each of these core competencies (plus 14 additional sales core competencies) has 8-10 attributes, there are a tremendous number of potential attributes to be addressed in any sales training. The better aligned the training is with actual needs, the more successful the training will be. See the data for all 21 Sales Core Competencies here, along with industry comparisons.
The other consideration is boots on the ground. If your win rate is too low, that doesn’t necessarily mean that your salespeople need training on closing, as it’s much more likely that the deal was lost because of something that should have happened earlier in the sales process. That is why the Sales Team Evaluation is so important as it will identify exactly what is causing each and every outcome that you can observe, like low win rate.
In the immortal words screamed from Jack Bauer from “24”, “DO IT NOW!”