Ahh tis quite true:.”…

??? Not sure if your question is meant to be taken seriously but why should anyone attend any type of training?

To learn new skills
To increase their knowledge
To become more effective at what they do
To provide a better service to customers
To become more attractive to employers and I could go on

I’m presuming that Sean possibly falls into the category of someone who is constantly trying to better himself and the work that he carries out. This is a common/necessary trait among all high achievers, from sport to business and is particularly relevant to salespeople.

Why does Padraig Harrington still work to improve his game?
Why does Ronan O Gara practice his kicking?
Why do sales people attend sales training?

To get better of course

Add into the mix, that salespeople operate an ever changing and highly competitive environment and you start to quickly realise, that some more interesting questions are:

How come so many sales people receive little or no sales training?
What can sales training be expected to deliver?
Does the responsibility for this start and end with the employer?
Is it fair to expect performance from untrained sales people?
Why is their such a high turnover of people in the sales industry?

Thanks for the question even if it was in jest?

Cheers,
Niall

Thanks so much for the kind words and yes I do remember you.

If you like, mail me at nialldevitt[at]btbtraining.com and you can fill me in on how things have been going.

Cheers,
Niall

Agreed, Information and the manner in which you deliver the information are key.

Thanks for your comments,
Niall

While I would agree that Identifying and resolving objections as part of investigative/consulting piece is vital best practice and you and Neil are correct in that it will be successful in identifying the majority of likely objections.

I would add that this is easier to achieve with bespoke products, IT, Services etc

Taking generalisations as black and white can sometimes be dangerous, here’s why:

If we take a imaginary situation where a prospect has five concerns/objections. Taking your example above, we could expect a top salesperson to route out, resolve and realign four of these during the consultative stage. However, there still remains one objection which now becomes the only real obstacle to the prospect buying.

My point being is that what will often happen is, (and this aometimes depends upon your definition of a what a sales objection really is?) good consultation will more often identify and resolve all or at least the majority of a prospects likely objections, but any that stubbornly remain now become focal objections to a successful close.

In other words, experienced salespeople may be already doing what Neil identified, for them to improve may involve focusing and improving around other areas.

Thanks for your comments,
Niall

As Neil Rackham discovered in his research (studying 35,000 sales calls) for his book SPIN Selling, 80% of objections in a sale are created buy the salesperson!

The most common way that salespeople do this is by failing to investigate and focus on the customer’s needs.