We hear all the time about “natural born salespeople,” but they are more myth than reality. Few are born with the ability to sell. For salespeople to perform successfully, they need to be familiar with all aspects of their jobs.

They must have face-to-face consultative selling, business development, and hvac-specific technical skills to do the complete sales function well. Skills must be learned, and heaven help those companies that allow their sales force to learn them haphazardly.

Salespersons must have the following skills and knowledge:

Face-to-face selling skills;

Customer knowledge;

Product/application knowledge;

Company knowledge;

Industryknowledge;and

Competitor knowledge.

10 Reasons to Provide Sales Training

For sales managers, training staff members depends on how well they handle these responsibilities. It is no secret that the better your staff is trained, the better they will sell.

There are 10 reasons why continuous sales training is necessary:

1. The cost of making direct sales calls continuously increases, making it imperative to have salespeople focused on efficiency and effectiveness.

2. Competition continuously gets smarter, making it necessary to learn new tricks or reinvent sales strategies to stay ahead.

3. Sales performance failure is an expensive luxury.

Terminating and hiring new salespeople who then need to be trained is costly in both time and lost opportunities.

4. Poorly trained salespeople reflect poorly on the entire company.

5. Company attitudes and behavior expectations need to be instilled.

6. Personal weaknesses, poor work habits, and other problems can be identified during training.

7. Good training programs are an important motivator due to salespeople’s increased confidence in their abilities.

8. We sell complex technical products and services which must be presented via a consultative selling process. Salespeople need to fully understand how their products and services provide benefits and solve their customers’ problems.

9. Customers expect sales professionalism and responsiveness.

10. Sales training helps prevent salespeople from growing stale, restless, or worse, from burning out.

Bedell is president of Excellence Alliance University (EAU), specializing in developing sales and sales management training programs for hvac business professionals. Call 800-880-7235 or visit www.eainet.net (website).

Publication date: 10/02/2000