5 Reasons Sales Training Courses Don’t Work

Anyone in a Sales position will know some of the pangs that come with their annual sales training courses. Although fairly useful, as the techniques and technology continue to improve sales performance, many of these courses seem to be a reiteration of the previous year.

And companies waste massive amounts of money on Bad Sales Training .

Here are 5 of the worst aspects about attending the majority of Sales Training courses out there:

1.) The training facilitators often lack sales experience themselves.

Which is perhaps why they are trainers and not sales people. Imagine you are instructed on how to negotiate by someone who never negotiated a sales deal on their own. It detracts from their credibility. Imagine how frustrating classroom discussions might get when the trainer cannot answer provoking questions due to incompetence.

2.) The training course is unnecessarily long.

Late starts, frequent breaks, long lunches, group discussions. All superfluous gimmicks used to beef up what could be achieved in a 1 day immersive into a 2 day course. These may be a welcoming distraction in other career roles, but it equates to 1 less day selling.

3.) The training course material is too familiar.

Being taught a regurgitation of information that you already knew is not only frustrating, but somewhat insulting. You are a professional, but getting repetitively spoon-fed the same material will make you doubt your ability.  Someone clearly thinks you are not getting the message.

4.) The training course material and / or facilitator lacked flexibility.

Contrary to the popular belief, selling IT, consumer products, finance or consultancy services vary significantly. One may use similar practices, but emphasis on different disciplines of the sales process can be major. If your sales training course cannot adapt its content to these differences, then what benefit are you actually receiving?

5.) The course’s inability to demonstrate tangible results.

The course completes and you return to the playing field to continue as usual. Perhaps you implement one or two pointers from what you have just learned. Realistically there is hardly ever a significant jump in performance. If there is, it might not be attributed to the training received. These factors make it difficult to prove any actual value obtained from the training.

At least, those are my personal gripes with sales training courses that I’ve experienced over the years. I am sure many of you can relate to most, if not all, those mentioned above. And the mere fact that any of you do relate to some of those points, indicates there is a clear need for overhaul of the traditional sales training process.

Proper sales training should be the polar opposite of the above:

1/ Professional sales people should be taught by other professionals, so they can dispense wisdom rather than rattle off powerpoint presentations.

2/ Salespeople would rather have an hour of intense, thought-provoking, barrier breaking insight than two days of drivel and mediocre lunches.

3/ Course material must reflect specific markets’ and industries’ demands with simple, applicable techniques. A generic, one-size-fits all approach, is all-too-common and absolutely NOT the way to achieve results.