Jeffrey B. • @Fiona - I'm sorry to say this but I feel you are confusing lots of different ideas here to justify why much sales training does not materially impact (positively) on sales performance..

(Re)-training underperforming salespeople often makes no difference because they are the wrong person in the right job or the right person in the wrong job.

I would say that, contrary to your assertion, 90% of what makes up success in sales IS attributable to the individual, not the other way around. Yes, they have to be in the right role and culture but just making everything right system-wise, product/service-wise etc doesn't make all people employed in sales by a given organisation successful. If it did, you could just drag any old Joe or Josephine in off the street and build a successful sales team.

Unfortunately (or fortunalely, depending on your point of view) it's not that easy! If individuals do not have a sufficiently strong focus on achieving targets, believe they can influence decision-making, are not afraid to ask questions to qualify prospects and to progress the sales process to it's next logical stage, then they will NOT be successful. Those attributes/behaviours are all linked to personality and hence suitabiility. They have everything to do with the individual and almost nothing to do with the company and its systems.

In summary, I could not disagree more with your statements or conclusion(s) other than the fact that sales training is often inappropriately used as an (ineffective) solution to a more deep-rooted problem.

Rob H. • Hi Fiona, I`m sorry that you feel that way, I think Jeffrey has made an excellent point here, If the individual hasn`t got what it takes then it simply isn`t going to happen.True performance comes from within, Attitude and behaviour comes from within, Passion for being the best comes from within.
If one is not motivated from the Heart and mind, no amount of process or external control is going to make them perform, People are not Robots! The sales process is neither a science nor an art, It is very much dependent on Relationship, empathy and deep understanding and that HAS to come from Within.

Fiona S. • Hi Jeffrey

Thanks for taking the time to comment on my post, your comment “that I am confusing lots of different ideas here to justify why much sales training does not materially impact (positively) on sales performance”

Jeffrey, there are many reasons for poor performance by employees that need to be considered. I am merely saying that we should not assume that training is the only answer to poor performance. We know that in many typical service organisations 60% of work is due to failure demand (i.e. due to the failure of the system to do or do something right for the customer), and for any employee it's highly demoralising working with a failure demand prone system.

My comments regarding system/job design are supported by research and are not off the top of my head! The first is through Systems Thinking which tells us that by far the greatest influence on outcomes is the design of the system/job in which people are working. Juran thought it was 85%, Deming thought 97% and Peter Senge talks about us being "prisoners of the system".

It would be appreciated if you can state the source of your comment that '90% of what makes up success in sales is attributable to the individual'? Or is this a comment from your experience?

The group is about “modern selling” and we are simply failing the next generation if we continue with traditional think and repeat what was done in the past. Training needs to be based on employees' futures and not on our past!

Have you read W Edwards Deming's “Out of the Crisis”? If not you may consider reading this book which discusses "...a long-term commitment to new learning, and a new philosophy is required of any management that seeks transformation.”

You may also want to reading John Seddon's "Freedom from Command and Control". John is a British occupational psychologist and "management guru” (albeit a highly practical one!) who challenges traditional management and leadership thinking.

With regard to your thoughts on targets can I suggest another great book by Seddon entitled “I Want You to Cheat” which clearly illustrates many key principles which need to be understood when improving the performance of organizations and questions why have targets.

Deming said "If management sets quantitative targets and make people's jobs depend on them - they will meet the targets - even if they have to destroy the enterprise to do it." In this context the banking industry may come to mind, where though it was self interest, greed shook and nigh destroyed that system.

I totally agree people are not robots and true purpose comes from within and I am a big fan of Dan Pink and his book "Drive - The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us". I believe sales people like all others need to work within an environment that is motivational and gives them autonomy, mastery and purpose. Some people who are used to the old Command and Control style of management may be rather uncomfortable with this!

I would suggest we understand work flow, identify failure demand, ensure there are good jobs so sales people achieve great results, and then develop and train for employees' futures.

A final quote from Frederick Herzberg "If you want people to do a good job, give them a good job to do!"

Jeffrey B. • Fiona - to me, you appear to be taking the results of generalised research and applying it specifically to sales. I do not disagree that there is often much wrong with roles and organisations but in many companies, there is more autonomy enjoyed in the sales function than in any other. Hit your targets and you are generally left alone. In most sales teams, a portion thereof hit or exceed target so it cannot be the system at fault as that would drag down everyone equally and they would all perform at a low level.

And I totally agree that sales training is often used as an ineffective panacea for deeper ills. But that does not necessarily mean the training fails because of poor systems or structure.

Our expertise is in assessment, specifically of salespeople. We also provide sales and sales management training and recruitment services. Indeed, we have experience of good recruits withering on the vine because they were not treated or managed appropriately. We have had training 'fail' because the individuals were not motivated to change their behaviour as the training required them to do.

Most of these failings were (and will continue to be) attributable to the people involved NOT the system in which they work. Almost all the 'failures' were predicted, in advance, as a consequence of us detecting incompatibilities in the personalities of the individuals involved and the demands of the role they undertake. Be that as the manager of the recruit or the recruit him/herself.

I confess I am not a great reader of management texts as I realised, back in the mid 80’s that most management texts contain 3-4 chapters written around a single (often good and novel) idea/concept and then 14 more chapters of padding to turn the idea into a book. Most management texts could be summarised on a single sheet of A4. I’m thinking of Maslow’s Hierarchy if Needs, the Peter Principle, etc. The reward for effort ratio is too low for my taste.

You quote various pieces of research and then some VERY specific percentage figures referring to the degree of attribution of the problem to ‘the system’ preceded by the word “think”. If the research was truly thorough it would have included detailed sensitivity testing to prove the extent of the attribution. And the figures would be precise (with a tolerance) rather than just the opinion of the researchers, as your post suggests to be the case.

My comment that about 90% o what makes a sales person successful is attributable to them as individuals is born out by the results of assessing salespeople of above and below target performance in almost every conceivable industry where salespeople are employed gathered over a period of almost 20 years.

Time and time again we find it is possible to predict the pecking order of the sales team with amazing precision based on the results of our sales-specific assessment questionnaires. Any our evidence confirms that many top performing salespeople are not that knowledgeable about the types of sales techniques acquired through training. What they have is a passion for results, listening, qualifying well, providing an appropriate solution, using their time wisely and a whole host of things they tend to do naturally because these are their innate behaviours i.e. they are well suited to the job.

And I can tell you that personally, I would always hire a rookie who has had no sales training and absolutely no sales experience but who has the right attributes for the sales role in question, than an ‘experienced’ salesperson who is trained to the hilt but isn’t made of the right stuff.

Fiona S. • Can I suggest that you watch his short video - The surprising truth about what motivates us http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc
including targets!

Jeffrey B. • All good stuff and Maslow updated, IMO.

Just to get the brain cells really stirred up and confused, you may also want to take a look at:

http://www.bnet.com/blog/smb-sales-advice/the-7-traits-of-quota-crushing-sales-pros/335?tag=mantle_skin;content

Neil W. • That link is excellent Jeffrey (and me to a tee, I hope / fear).

What appears to be at stake is that 95% (give or take a made up statistic) of UK business is built on 20th Century, stable, planned, predictable and manageable expectations, people and systems.

One of these "quota crushers" would not be at all out of place, however, pioneering the western USA, and either (organising teams) digging for gold or inventing and delivering anything from a whore-house to a bank (same thing?) - responding to whatever customer demand arose. There would be no "established colleagues" to rail against, and whatever worked, would work.

"The problem" is then how to match up and identify the genuinely useful and "in demand" products and services, and innovations leading to those, with the "employees" - including quota-crushing sales reps, who can happily co-ordinate and communicate between them and their (changing) customers.

Then leaving the comparatively minor problem you're asking about Fiona, of first "bottling" whatever of those skills can be called "sales performance skills", and then finding similar people to whom they could apply, and who could "learn" from "training", if that's what it takes.

Should also help (once defined) to whittle out those types who would not fancy or suit that kind of communication and creative architecture role, in a million years, no matter how much training they suffered.

Kind of like "Do you want to be an astronaut?" - where it is much more evident what is involved, and what the big picture for "The Right Stuff" looks like.

Fiona S. • I have seen the link before I think it was on twitter!

These quote crushers have some great attributes, client champions, understand their customers’ market and trade information, but equally placed in the wrong system can be a disaster! The Bankers come to mind, their focused on doing what it took to achieve the sale / target can be catastrophe.

The Hawthorn experiments discovered that if a firm developed a bonus system, the managers might control the system for a maximum of two years - after that the workers will have developed the means through which they controlled the bonus system - for their own benefit. Is this cheating? It was management that set the parameters of the game, it was just that the workers soon learn to play the game better than the managers. The disaster is that "management" has failed to learn, from the Hawthorn experiments and the numerous disasters since then - We have had nearly 80 years of not learning from our mistakes!

Organisations and governments thinks that "Targets" just need to be redefined. The Bankers are now sales people and the banking industry thinks the sums paid out to banker's in their bonus system should be modified!

They are not addressing the fundamentally wrong principles on which targets are based. Banks may have reached their targets banks made great finical gain,CEO where happy for a short time, before they were sacked! However, in their wake they have left customers total dissatisfied, banks and bankers are no longer trusted the industry is held in contempt.So quote crushers need to work in good sytems, that harness the best in them.

A final quote from Edwards Deming -"If management sets quantitative targets and makes people's jobs depend on them - some of those people will met the targets - even if they have to destroy the enterprise to do it" – the banking industry, is a great example, though it self interest and greed it destroyed and shook that system

We need to challenge ourselves, learn from past mistakes, develop great sales jobs so those who have desire to sell can be coached do a great job for their customers and the industry so all are held in high esteem.

Iain S. • Apologies but who exactly is the "We" that in the title of this discussion "assumed if sales people are not performing the solution is sales training"?

As a goal setting, crm using, control freak of a sales trainer I am beginning to doubt anything I do works. Come on Fiona stop being so nice and come over to the dark side - it's great fun creating legions of mini me's obsessed with hitting their sales targets.

Fiona S. • Iain been there and done that!

Peter S. • Guys, guys guys,

When did sales suddenly become so complicated?

Answer, when sales people stopped being taught to run a patch, learn about it and make sure that the prospecting, opportunity creation and customer proposition was all controlled by the person on the ground.

Sales peeps today don't know how to sell. Sorry to be so brash, but 99% of the sales peeps I encounter couldn't sell air conditioners to Arabs. ket alone fridges to Eskimos.

With the huge changes going on in the way people buy everything from TVs to Tractors the current generation of sales people are about as relevant as dinosaurs.

Yes the industry needs to improve training, but as Neil Warren has so often pointed out, there is no point at all in training people to operate in a world that will soon no longer exist.

Fiona S. • Peter you have hit the nail on the head!

In 1980, I moved into the corporate world and sales, I loved my job! I believe I am intrinsically motivated just like everyone else, and need to have autonomy, purpose and mastery to have job satisfaction. We had few targets and since the sales figures only emerged monthly, I spent my time with the customers rather than analysing my activity on a daily basis. I was highly motivated to do a good job and new sales followed.

By the mid 1980s, I was a sales manager and enjoyed the role. However, ‘in the 90s
the thinking in industry was to increase sales by increasing the number of sales people on the ground trying to gain more frequent access to the same customers. Mass recruitment was afoot, which incorporated assessment centres and psychometric testing enabling managers to recruit only those who matched the narrow profile determined by the organisation!

My personal belief is that when recruiting like-minded people this leads to teams being formed with individuals who all have similar strengths and weakness. Therefore, by definition they are not a team (Belbin)! Clearly those who rise to the top are there because they fit the mould of those who are already at the top – in these organisations what happened to diversity of thinking?

Technology was being used to manage everyone, targets were set on every conceivable parameter of the work, customer relationship management (CRM) systems, sales v target, call rates, completion of reports, etc., all were electronically monitored daily! Coercion, manipulation, micro-managing and bullying were also on the increase. Trusting employees to do a good job without being measured day in day out had vanished.

Corporate thinking became group-think, and these often static systems and strategies were repeated allbeit with a new twist. It was indicative of working for 10 years and having one year’s experience 10 times over – just like ground-hog day! Individuals who challenged the systems to try to improve working practice and results were perceived as not being in the corporate mould.

Today we have few true sales people and all the training in the world will not change this until its accept that customers buying habits are changing. Then understand the work flow of what is requred by the sales person to meet customers needs and and start coach sales people for their future not our past!

Neil W. • "Answer, when sales people stopped being taught to run a patch..."

That's the bit I'm concerned about Peter (sorry to say). Those quota-crushers did NOT look like they were just "running a patch" in Command & Control style, selling whatever HO said they should sell, to the amounts HO said they should sell it, at the time HO said they should sell it, and to the types of customers (only) that HO had determined were ideal.

My son springs to mind, having found AND developed the "perfect" client, in the toughest of all possible years, only to be told after a successful "top level" meeting where he'd invited his Sales Director (or Big Boss - there were layers and layers of them) along for the ride, that it was "too big" for him and would probably have to go to the "Wholesale" division.

And my own version of it cropped up when I was thankfully in a position to be able to truly listen, and react, and had to come back to my new company and colleagues and tell them that although we could continue to realistically aim at an £80,000 target for Certified Accountant Magazine, launching the part-qualified version, PASS, would be worth more like £500,000 - and it was.

So the "quota-crusher" bit I chimed most closely with was where the passionate concern for getting customers what they wanted (which doesn't hurt our earnings any, I agree) was really to do with battling unwilling-to-change colleagues in your own company into "submission" (and thus "success").

Peter S. • The role of a company is to provide the best possible levels of satisfaction to its customers. Its profit is simply a measure of how well it discharges that task.

The problem is that the explosion of systems means that everything has to be documented and analysed to the nth degree, and the information that comes from those systems is only a good as what goes in.

With everyone now being bonused on their personal achievements, what sales person is going to enter "Phone rang, from someone I've never heard, of who found us on the web, and placed an order for xxty thousand pounds worth of gear"

Instead a huge industry has grown up of people selling solutions to the problem that actually address the symptoms, not the illness, which is quite simply that people, in all walks of life, will no longer accept being sold to.

The challenge today is to find people who are in market, and help them to buy from you.

Neil W. • "With everyone now being bonused on their personal achievements..."

So is that the bit that has to change then Peter?

And Fiona has a CRM story that will make you laugh / cry / commit hara-kiri (depending on how involved or concerned one is about the future of the sales profession and your philosophy on "life" generally), but I'm not sure if she's free to discuss / share - are you Fiona?

I haven't been able / needed to use my CRM though either, despite being a huge fan since the early days of Tracker (became Maximizer), and I know we're not alone there.

P.S. Iain - for example - do you use one, which, to enter and do what? And/or does Sandler generally have an approved version they use, such that "leads" can be passed around the franchisees, etc. etc.?

Neil W. • P.P.S. I know that TACK International, similarly, have been obliged to make some recent changes from a market-leading "off the shelf" version to something hybrid, so I'm not "picking on" you / Sandler.

Peter S. • Actually Neil that is a whole discussion in itself.

Back in the day when you were at Haymarket and I was at Reed, the only people who got bonused were the sales peeps, and they had to genuinely build business in order to hit their commission targets.

They had genuine input into promotions, promoting features around industry events and on a couple of my books were directly behind creating new magazine and event initiatives that made a truckload of money for the company and a few bob for those involved.

Everyone else accepted that the basic salary for a 'rep' was pretty pants, and because they were prepared t take the risk and place faith in their own ability to sell, no-one, apart form one or two FoCs, got bent out of shape about it.

Today, everyone down to the doorman seems to be on a bonus. It's got most out of hand in the City, but right across the spectrum people who really should just be paid a decent salary to do a good job, are now strung into quarterly reviews, 360 assessments and a whole bunch of ' metrics'.

Sadly none of these is outward looking - they are all about the internal processes and politics of the organisation. That's why they are irrelevant.

You can have the best processes in the world, the best metrics, incentives and management development schemes. But if your customers aren't in the market for what you're selling, you're on a hiding to nothing.

Fiona S. • Neil happy to share it is so ridiculous! The company hated that I had showed their system was ****! The CRM cost a fortune and was the baby of one on the global directors!

One of my many experiences was around a target being set to complete 95% of the company’s CRM database by a given date! Easy, I completed the database, and at the same time achieved the highest market share world-wide for the key product sales!

I received many congratulations and a bonus! Then the ultimate accolade, being interviewed on stage about my sales success and achievement of 95% completion of the CRM database, in front of hundreds of colleagues at a corporate world conference.

I felt daunted and asked if I could see a copy of the interview questions prior to the interview so that I would feel better prepared. I had no intention of being manipulated in front of the company and my colleagues, and being constrained to give the impression that I believed in the value of the CRM system, and that the sales and marketing tactics had led to my success when I believed it clearly had not. I hasten to add, my views on the CRM system were no different to those of many colleagues.

As you may have guessed, the offer to recognise my success at the conference was hastily withdrawn! Nevertheless I attended the conference and many colleagues within breakout workshops enquired as to how I had achieved my sales results, and why I was not being recognised for my success! Absolutely no public reference was made to my sales success and shortly afterwards I was selected for redundancy!

Unfortunately I can give many more examples of such experiences - both my own and others’.

I have worked with some wonderful people within my industry. It’s the system that needs to change; we need radically new and different thinking at the top of organisations. The current thinking of management does not serve well the customer, employee nor shareholder, and is no way to run business sustainably for the future. Management as we know it is failing. Time for unreasonable learning and change!