Research (1) has found that the majority of sales teams are left on their own to prepare for new product launches with static marketing collateral and no sales training. Only 38% receive a structured immersion into new products with selling practice only accounting for 3% of the immersion. Most sales teams learn the material themselves leaving the organisation open to huge variability in messaging.
The survey also revealed a lack of sales coaching – only 18% were offered coaching on a monthly or bi-monthly basis. 32% indicated they never received any sales coaching to support the launch of new products. This seems a massive miss when we know that functional coaching is THE tipping point to reducing the time to competency and therefore maximising the return on training investment.
This is evidence of a critical gap in an organisation’s ability to sell. Marketing and sales teams need to come together to find a way to bring competence and confidence to the sell, so that there is the maximum opportunity to secure “yes”.
Who’s selling in your organisation? One function called “sales” or all functions?
(1) Corporate visions
If you would like to discuss sales training please contact Sonia Johnson at The Quantic Group on SJohnson@thequanticgroup.com +44(0)1252 616100 http://www.thequanticgroup.com/team13.htm
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You’re absolutely right. At the heart of all human interaction is sales. The mastery of such is important for success in any endeavor.