Not All Sales Training is the Same… It Took Me a Long Time to Understand Why

Okay, honesty right up front. It took me a LONG TIME to realize why I loved some of the sales training that I got over the years and why other training would frustrate and disappointment me.

Often times the trainings that disappointed me the most were from very good sales trainers! It wasn’t until very recently (since I won’t say how ‘recently’, maybe I’m not being completely honest…) I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why. What made it even worse, was sometimes I would go back to some of the training that I hadn’t liked at first, read or listened to it again…and now liked it!

What I finally figured out was that the different ‘sales training’ programs and courses were teaching different aspects or components of sales…but most of them didn’t say that. They didn’t say what aspects they were covering. They would simply create some attention-grabbing title like “Get All the Clients You Ever Want…While You Sleep!” or “How to Have Prospects Throwing their Money at You…Without Even Asking”.

When I was disappointed was when what I needed or was looking for was not what they were teaching.

THE DIFFERENT TYPES (OR ASPECTS) OF SALES TRAINING

What I realized was there are basically 4 different aspects of sales that we need to understand; therefore, that's what sales training programs cover.

1. Sales Strategy: High-level overarching plan to acquire clients. This includes knowing your sales goals, who your clients are, how you will reach them, what your budget is, and your action plan to make it all work. (In just a minute we’re going to link you to a tremendous article that covers this wonderfully.)
   
   
2. Sales Tactics: These are the specific actions, behaviors, and messages or communication that you’ll do at different points in the sales process. For example, you might want to know how to respond to an initial inquiry that asked about your pricing. Or you may want to know how to best handle certain objections. Or how to ‘close the deal’.
   
   
3. Sales Mindset (or Attitude): As it sounds, this is simply how you think about sales and selling to get the best results.
   
   
4. Other information that helps in Strategy or Tactics: This is sort of a ‘catch-all’ category that helps you improve your results in the other areas. For us this includes things like understanding ‘emotional buyers’; or knowing your prospects have already done a lot of research before they even start to communicate with you. These don’t change what your strategy or tactics are, but they help improve your performance when you’re in those situations.

So, when I was disappointed by good sales training, it was because I was looking for help in one of these 4 areas but the training I was taking was covering one of the other areas.

Hopefully, this will help you understand and clarify what sort of help you’re looking for and therefore, help you improve your sales ability (and confidence).

If you’re a member of The Abundance Group already, you’ll realize we’ve tried to make it very clear which area we’re covering so you know what to expect.

AN INCREDIBLE SALES STRATEGY ARTICLE

With that, let us leave you with a link to an incredible sales strategy article, from one of our TAG product partners (ConvertKit), written for them by one of our TAG service providers (Kayla Hollatz): 7 Elements of a Successful Sales Strategy.