We have all sat through our share of boring training courses, designed around disseminating vast amounts of information to as many people as possible, and in as little time as possible, without any thought of incorporating the attendees’ past experiences, or providing individualized attention to attendees who need more support, or who crave more of a challenge.

This won’t work in the sales training setting. There are a great many inspirational speakers who can deliver a rousing talk to a large audience, but is this training? Are you actually developing skills in this setting? In order to learn and really get something out of a sales training course, you need to be engaged: you need to be a participant, not an attendee.

A good sales trainer should offer a course that can motivate, engage, and involve the participants. Instead of being lectured to, they should participate actively in their own learning. The trainer should work with the participants to help them understand that sales training is a skills development course that can not only help them in their day-to-day tasks, but help them down a path of life-long improvement with practical sales skills that they can use every day.

Strategic customer relationship management has been my focus for the last twelve years. During this time I have worked with sales executives, managers and directors at major software vendors and consulting firms. I have always faced one major challenge: how to sell software or services to people who just don’t believe it can help them. “This is going to waste my time,” they say.

Maybe that’s one of the reasons why CRM still does not have the same impact on sales as it does for marketing and service organizations.

Recently, I have completed some research which asked sales executives the major benefits that CRM brought to sales organizations. Most of them said that even considering indirect benefits related to their activities such as communications or reduction in administrative overhead, CRM did not help on its main promise: to increase sales productivity and revenues.

In fact, sales automation, when associated to mobile order entry is quite well recognized as an important tool. However, when associated with increased sales effectiveness with any kind of structured methodology, sales reps just turn their faces: “I’m afraid that it will take me too much time,” they say, “I do not see it as something that could make me work better.”

Working in the consulting business for the last 5 years, I could not find anything really new in this business. That is until a sales rep at one of my clients said to me: “Hey Enio, I´m in control of all my opportunities,” and showed me a PDA running a piece of software with an interesting dashboard. According to him, it was the first software that was worth using, because time invested on data entry results in fantastic results. He said, “You should try it yourself!”

It was the first time in many years that a sales rep told me that sales software was helping him to sell. I decided to check the methodology behind that software. And guess what? I found the book Sales Automation Done Right. Based on the ideas in the book, SalesWays was able to build Sales Cycle Manager, the software that makes the methodology come alive.

Enio Klein
Principal at K&G