Can You Train My Salespeople to Be Super Closers?

"I want you to train my salespeople to become powerful closers better than the insurance people." "Can you train my sales team and get them to increase their closing rate?"  "Andy, I want you to come and train my sales guys on how to hit and exceed their sales targets"  

The above are the three most common requests I hear from my clients and prospects.  It seems that in this weak economy, every company wants to focus on sales and they think that sales training is the fastest way to increase sales. 

But is this true?

As a full-time trainer, consultant and coach since 2001, having trained tens of thousands of people in 15 countries, my answer to the above questions is simply, "Yes".  

But we know deep down inside that sales training is just one aspect in sales. For a company to increase its sales, there are 5 major factors.

1. Macro environment: Is the industry going up or down? What stage of the product or industry cycle are we in? Are we in a start-up situation where sales take-up will be slow?  What about government factors: are they in favour of our industry? 
2. Company situation: Is the company able to handle more sales? Are there enough cash flow to operate and handle the bigger volume? Are there enough supplies, inventory and logistics to support the increase in volume?
3. Sales Compensation Structure: Is there enough motivation in the form of money for salespeople to perform? Many companies have poorly constructed sales incentive systems that do not compensate adequately or fairly. For example, many of them have almost impossible-to-hit sales targets as a first criteria for salespeople to earn sales incentives. Many sales managers have to spend time managing their sales team and end up earning less than their salespeople because they do little sales. No wonder so many salespeople turn down promotion invitations and prefer to remain as a salesperson
4. Attractiveness in the Marketplace. Many of the companies I trained have pricing and product specifications that are neither attractive nor tempting. For example, many of them are selling higher price for lousier specifications, much like HTC M10 (US$680) phones versus Oppo R9 (US$400). 
5. Right People in the Sales Team.  Many companies hire salespeople that are neither suitable for sales nor have the drive to do sales. Most of them lack the why to do sales. They are there just for money and as a result, they are driven by short term results. When salespeople are driven by short term results, they often take short cuts and over-promise under-deliver. 

As we can see, sales training is the fastest way to increase sales, but only for a short term. Over the longer term, the above five macro factors must be favourable and in place. Within each macro factor, there are easily 10 to 15 factors. so we are talking about 75 factors for sales to do well. 

Written by Andy Ng, Chief Sales Trainer and Consultant at www.asiatrainers.com