This week we have a guest column from Doug Davidoff, one of our partners in our InSiteSM Sales model.

I’ve been involved in sales training for more than 25 years. As a salesperson, an executive building a sales team and a sales trainer myself, I’ve learned one simple truth. Most approaches to sales training fail.

Don’t get me wrong; most of the training is pretty good. The problem isn’t the material (necessarily). The problem is far more complex than that.

Sales training isn’t build for the real world. It teaches what I like to call “the illusion of certainty.” Too much of the training focuses on techniques and it teaches a “right way” and a “wrong way” of doing things.

In the real world, there are no absolute rights or wrongs.   No two situations are the same. Instead of teaching techniques and tricks, sales reps need to be taught how to deal with situations and scenarios. The days of the “power close” are over (though, actually I’m not sure they ever really existed). As The Challenger Study from the Sales Executive Council taught, successful selling is not about personalities, but rather about approaches; it’s not about talent, it’s about skill; and it’s not about tactics, it’s about technique

If you’re looking to create sustainable improvements to your revenue and operating performance you need to avoid these three pitfalls that will doom any effort:

It’s not built for the way customers buy today.

If you’re in the process of considering new sales training for your organization, the first question you should ask in evaluating options is, “How has this approach changed to reflect how consumers buy today?”

I’m exposed to sales training all of the time. It doesn’t matter who the vendor is, the vast majority feel like they’re still stuck in 1990s. Sandler, Miller Heiman, Wilson, Richardson, Aslan. They’re all the same.

They’re still anchored in the belief that the salesperson is the chief purveyor of information and knowledge. They all act as though the prospect has done little or knows very little about their options.

If you think of the buying journey as a story, the salesperson plays the role of the hero in their plot. Twenty years ago that was true. But as Google’s Zero Moment of Truth study shows, customers don’t buy like that anymore. Salespeople no longer play the lead role in educating the prospect, instead they’re the curators of education; and your sales training needs to teach them how to do that.

The training is process centered.

The sales process used to be a (relatively) linear process, and could even be managed with a script. In an effort to create the feeling of certainty that makes delivering training much simpler, most sales training programs break the sales process up into progressive chunks.

• Qualify
• Present
• Trial Close
• Overcome Objections
• Close

When meeting the salesperson was the first step in the journey, these types of approaches worked. Today the salesperson is often the last step of the journey.

The first challenge a salesperson has today is getting in synch with their prospect. If your sales training is process focused, the salesperson has no chance of getting in synch, and the approach won’t stand up to the test of time.

Instead, focus on milestones. Train you sales staff to understand what we call “The Decision Journey.” In the sales approach we advocate, we highlight the milestones of that journey, teaching salespeople to understand situations and then to apply their knowledge and skills to the various scenarios that present themselves.

We don’t teach step one, step two and so on. That’s actually an approach that makes salespeople less effective. We teach skills and provide tools that are applied to situations. Salespeople become smarter, more responsive and more customer friendly.

Lack of alignment with other processes

Sales doesn’t occur in a vacuum. Working with a prospective client, one of the first warning signs of a flawed approach is when they say something like, “We need to become a sales culture.” Sure, it sounds good, but what does that mean?

Do they think they’ll change the compensation system, teach some new skills, say the magic phrase and BOOM better sales results?

I often ask the prospect how they would feel if we were able to improve sales, create that “sales culture,” and 12 months later they’re blowing away their closing targets and customer complaints increase, customers start leaving negative reviews online and renewals or resales decrease?

With fright in their eyes they share, “Of course, that can’t happen!”

Sales and the sales process exist within a complex business system. You can’t change one part of the system and not expect everything else to change.

To gain real, lasting results you must make sure that you sales training process is aligned with your approach to service, operations, finance and so on – what we refer to as “the sales ecosystem.” Organizations with alignment experience powerful results while those without it will continue to struggle.