Effective Sales Training: What Are the Foundational Elements?

Frank V. Cespedes (Top Sales Magazine, April 2018)
Someone once told me that many companies maintain their equipment better than their people. If so, they get what they don’t maintain. This is especially true in sales. Across industries, turnover in sales averages about 25-30% annually. This means that, at many firms, the equivalent of the entire sales force must be replaced and trained every four years or so. Any talk about talent management which ignores a requirement of that magnitude is just talk.
Despite what you currently hear about “big data” and “predictable revenue,” selling is not a science reducible to a few methodological rules that can be specified ex-ante. Many variables affect selling effectiveness besides the sales person: price, product, competition, market conditions, and so on. It’s your responsibility to adapt, not the market’s responsibility to be kind to your sales efforts.
But as the phrase implies, “sales reps” represent their organization