Sales Training: Secrets to Success

I travel a great deal when doing sales training seminars and consulting for my clients. And when I do, I sometimes stay in hotels that have a breakfast bar.

Often, these breakfast bars have a waffle-maker. You pour in a cup of waffle batter, turn the waffle iron over, and your waffle cooks in a couple minutes. At the end of the cooking time, the timer lets you know your waffle is done. You flip the waffle iron back, open it up, and remove your delicious golden brown waffle from the iron and begin your breakfast.

Last week, I stayed in such a hotel. A woman had added the waffle batter to the waffle iron. When it was cooked (baked?), the loud, beeping timer went off to alert the user that it was time to flip the waffle iron over and remove the waffle.

But the woman didn't know what the alarm meant. She knew she needed to do something, but she didn't know what the something was. So she looked for a button or switch to shut off the timer. She tried to open the waffle iron, but it wouldn't open (you have to flip it over first). She became the center of attention in the breakfast area of the hotel, and her frustration was growing with every beep. Embarrassment had set in.

I got up to help her. I showed her how to flip over the waffle iron and open the cover. The beeping timer stopped immediately. Relieved, she proceeded to remove her waffle and get on with her breakfast.

I taught this woman the secret of moving from intent (intending to eat a waffle) to action (actually being able to eat it). She now knows the secret of successfully using a waffle iron in a hotel.

As a sales trainer, that's also what I do: I teach salespeople the secret to selling more. If you intend to sell more, that's great...but that intention alone won't get you there. You also need to know how to do it (how to operate the sales waffle iron, if you will).

Sales training is all about teaching sales people more effective ways to go about their daily business so that a better result can be achieved. Waffles - and increased sales performance - are wonderful things.

Waffle photo by April at flickr.com.

Please share your comments by clicking on "comments" below.

Skip Anderson is the Founder and President of Selling to Consumers, a B2C sales training and consulting company. Subscribe to the free Selling to Consumers Sales Tips Newsletter.

Comments

[Sell Better]

Well put Skip. I think the other part of the thing sales trainers do is to actually allow sales people to accept help. The lady with the waffle was willing because there was immediate payoff, food and no longer being the centre of attention. For sales people, the pay off are not always instantaneous, so sales trainers like you can also help them deal with the perceived lag in effort to pay off. Gonna have breakfast now.

Tibor

[Skip Anderson]

Tibor, that's an excellent point. I did a sales training seminar a couple weeks ago (her company required her to be there) where she shook her head "no" through the majority of the seminar, as sort of a passive-aggressive response to her having to listen to a sales trainer for a few hours. I can guarantee that, unless that automated "no" response gets changed to a "I'll try it" or at least a "maybe this is worth considering" response, nothing is going to change in that salesperson's sales behaviors. That's one way to void sales learning...just decide beforehand that there's no merit in learning.