Thursday, June 29, 2006

Successful selling goes beyond 'sales training'

Selling and sales training ideas, courses, programmes, products, etc., are just part of the picture.

Modern selling requires understanding and capabilities that extend way beyond traditional 'sales training' skills.
Modern selling is about life, people, business (and increasingly ethical business and corporate responsibility), communications, behaviour, personality and psychology, self-awareness, attitude and belief.
Selling is about understanding how people and systems work, and enabling good outcomes. (By 'systems' I mean organisations and processes and relationships, not just systems in the sense of tools and IT.)
Sales training of course addresses some of these issues, but not all of them.
So consider and learn about other aspects of modern business, management, and self-development that interest you, and extend this principle to your people if you are a sales manager or coach.
Develop your experience and understanding of organisations, management and business - beyond sales training alone - and you will greatly increase your value and effectiveness to employers and clients, and to the organisational and business world generally.
The more you understand about how people think, how organisations work and how they are managed, the more effective you will be.
Look beyond sales training and selling, and strive to become an enabler and a facilitator of good outcomes.
This is the role of the modern sales-person. It's a highly valuable, sought-after and transferable capability.

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