Mike Kelly describes a sales training course that went far
Selling with
beyond his expectations.
Integrity
Frutiger Times
I
t’s the last day of my sales training course. The setting is the luxurious Ritz Carlton in Phoenix, and we’ve just had our fill of the best lunch they can provide. The sales trainers are there with shiny shoes and winning smiles, knowing they’ve delivered a smooth, professional course to a seasoned group of business people. There are about 25 participants, ranging from sales managers to VPs and presidents, and they each stand at the podium to talk about what they’ve learned from the course. This is standard operating procedure for a sales training course, nothing you haven’t witnessed many times before.
Frut Why is it, then, that a senior training manager who has delivered thousands of such speeches can’t get through his without shedding tears? Eventually he has to leave the podium like an overwrought father at his only daughter’s wedding, with much left unsaid. Next comes a tall, hefty man who spent 12 years as a lieutenant in a high-security prison. He’s faced down prison riots, but when it comes to speaking to his fellow participants, he has a lump in his throat the size of his native Texas, and the audience has to avoid eye contact with others so they won’t betray their own emotions. 33
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Over the next hour, all the participants give one- or two-minute presentations, and although some cover it with humor and some with facts and figures, it’s obvious that this course has affected people profoundly.
Skills are not enough How intense could learning how to handle objections or close a sales call be, you ask? We are joined at the presentation by a few people who are evaluating what the course could do for their company, and I can see they don’t get it either. How could a sales training course do this to people? To find out, we need to go back to day one. On Monday morning, we arrive at the hotel and are met outside the conference room with coffee, pastries, and fruit. Nice music is playing, and the trainers, dressed in typical salesperson attire, do a nice job of welcoming people. Just what you’d expect at a sales training course. The first thing we’re presented with is the notion that you can’t teach people to sell by teaching people to sell. An interesting idea, and not one we had expected. This statement prompted several questions, and the main answer was that selling is not an intellectual process but an experiential one. We discuss this for a while and then get back to familiar territory with an introduction to a sales process that’s logical and easy to learn.
you can think of. By the end of the day, we’ve learned the system and can appreciate its value as a sales tool. Day two begins with a speech from Ron Willingham, founder of Integrity Systems. He takes us through his start as a salesman and development of his process, the psychological findings he uses, and how we act as human beings first and salespeople
It’s a six-stage process that can be used in every sales environment, from a five-minute telesales call to a 12-month sales cycle. The system used bears the acronym AID, INC, which stands for Approach, Interview, Demonstrate val-I-date, Negotiate, and Close. We then have six one-hour sessions to cover the main points of AID, INC. It’s similar to the customer-needs driven sales courses that abound and is the polar opposite of the stimulus-response/ product-focused sales approaches some companies still use. The system aims to establish the need of the customer first, then offer the appropriate solution to the problem. It also highlights the need to walk away if you genuinely can’t offer a solution to their problem and to deliver more to your customer than they are paying for—not in product value but in customer service, quality, and any number of ways
second. Ask a hundred people what they think of selling, and you’ll get an almost entirely negative response. The average salesperson has to contend with society’s view of selling as well as his/her belief in the noble art, their abilities, and the value of the product or service—and this is all before walking through the door. We were starting to see why learning sales skills was not enough. Ron touched on a salesperson’s “call reluctance,” and I remembered the trepidation I felt calling on customers in my first sales job, and the pleasure I felt when the tough customers weren’t in. My belief in my abilities was in its infancy, and I
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It’s difficult to determine whether a salesperson is acting within his/her core values, but it’s easy to see a commitment to activities. An underperforming salesman will have his call statistics thrown at him as the reason he is not hitting his targets. Increase activity and you will be successful, he is told. But if a salesperson is acting against his core values or doesn’t believe in his ability to sell, all the sticks in the world will not get him to that goal. He may know intellectually that he must increase activity, but he will not have the achievement drive to push him through his pain barriers.
No more carrots and sticks Having been through this course, I can see that using the carrot or stick to get more activity out of a salesperson is focusing on the symptom, rather than the cause. That cause is tightly wrapped inside that individual. was always trying to “sell” product. It was a matter of me convincing my customer to buy from me, rather than sharing a problem and reaching a mutually successful conclusion. This course was helping me to recognize and deal with those emotions. We were also presented with four core traits of successful salespeople: the ability to set clear, specific
goals; the ability to use the energy released from setting those goals; the ability to understand and take control of the emotions you experience; and the ability to ask questions and listen to responses to gain empathy and rapport. The final piece of the Integrity Selling puzzle is what they call the Sales Congruence model. For a salesperson to reach their full potential, certain dimensions must reach congruence. A salesperson must have a positive view of selling and his/her abilities, an ability to work without upsetting their personal core values, a belief in the product, and commitment to activities.
In the end, we didn’t learn how to sell by having people teach us how to sell. We learned by experiencing the course and gaining a better understanding of ourselves. The trainers were actually facilitators who set us off on a small project every session, and the learning took place within the groups. The conundrum, of course, is trying to describe something you must experience to understand.
Having been through this course, I can see that using the carrot or stick to get more activity out of a salesperson is focusing on the symptom, rather than the cause. That cause is tightly wrapped inside that individual.
MANAGEMENT
I can only speak for myself, but I’m sure everyone in the course would agree. This course has not only permanently changed the way I run my business, it’s changed the way I run my life. And I hope I’ve successfully explained why this was not just another sales training course. Over the next few months, I’ll be reporting on the impact the course is having as we implement it at RedCoat Publishing. We’ll show how we deliver the program to the sales team, their reaction to the program, and the results we see.
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