The primary reason sales training fails is...

I've read about salespeople who received sales training and their productivity went up for a short period of time only to see it go back to what it was before - give or take.

The main reasons given for this productivity pitfall were lack of reinforcement and faulty sales processes often labeled as "Traditional Sales Training".

From my own experience I'd say the primary reason sales training fails is the trainee not the training.

Thoughts?

I think the primary reason why sales training fails is the lack of application of what they learned during the tarining. It's easy to learn all the theory in sales marketing but if you don't apply all the skills and knowledge that you've learned, you'll never succeed.

I would say the lack of transfer is often because the training doesn't use exercises, roleplaying, examples etc -- or it just sucks. Training is often mistargetted, misinformed and just plain boring.

A lot of so called training is just rah rah motivational stuff. No techniques. No wonder it fades away.

I have seen salespeople with no training do great and salespeople with a lot of training do terrible. Generally speaking I do not think the problem is the training.

There are few reasons for training to fail. One of the reasons is lack of good sales techniques. A salesman must understand those techniques when and how to used them. This brings us to anther reason: Psychology behind every step of a Sales Process. Also, lets not forget: Closing. If a salesman does not closing a Prospect the whole Sales Process is out the window. "Closing" is Not a "dirty" word. It is when a salesman is asking a prospect to Buy.

All those reasons are only about 15% for a salesman to be successfull. The rest, 85%, is salesman's attitude. We have to be realistic that we can not sell to every prospect, which brings us to another issue of Closing Ratio. But this is another subject. If a salesman can not take Rejection the right way, he would not be able to develope a Thick Skin, be immune to rejections. Then, any training would not be able to help him.

When I train salespeople, I am trying to make clear to them that without Thick Skin, without the right attitude, without psychologically understanding the Sales Process, they can not sell successfully.

Thank You.

The primary reason salespeople fail is they don't work hard enough regardless if they are trained or untrained. That's my opinion.