Most salespeople arrive in their profession in a roundabout way. Most have already spent some time in their industry doing something totally unrelated to selling. But if they get involved, as many do, with supporting the direct efforts of the company’s dealings with the customer, they are often enticed to cross the line—to get permanently involved in the most important customer facing process, that of sales.

A direct result of this circuitous route to the job of selling is that many salespeople never get a logical step-by-step grounding in the language and science of their profession. A recent article in the Wall Street Journal pointed out that most Universities shy away from implimenting comprehensive programs that teach sales, even though corporate America wants them to do it.

I’m not saying that salespeople don’t get trained, they do. But the training is almost always centered on the immediate needs of the sales team, driven by strategic and tactical considerations. Consequently salespeople are drilled on what to do and say in front of a customer without having a firm understanding of the sales cycle and the fundamental characteristics of the sales opportunity itself. This is why so many salespeople have trouble with forecasting—they don’t understand how to recognize the value of the sale, and what factors determine it. This ignorance is compounded by misunderstanding the underlying dynamics of the customer’s buying process, which means that it becomes impossible to make worthwhile predictions on when the sale will conclude. Faced with this, Managers have a tough time in predicting future revenues, which in lean economic times can have an adverse effect on the health of the business.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 1st, 2006 at 10:23 am and is filed under SalesWays, Sales. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.