If Ben Franklin were in sales, he'd have nothing on Dave Anderson. A trainer and prolific author with roots in automotive sales, Anderson slings out sales management wisdom like so much parade candy. He's a Q&A subject who doesn't need the Q's.
We tracked him down recently at his office near Los Angeles and if this small dose of sagaciousness is the result of a 60-minute telephone conversation, imagine what a full workshop would produce!
Companies look at training as an expense more than an investment. They'll build an extra building and call it an asset, but they view training their people as an expense.
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Stop turning training into punishment. I hear managers say things like, "If you can't sell 10 units next month you're going back to training." Training should be perceived as a privilege and an opportunity, but that has to start with the manager's attitude.
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There is nothing more dangerous than being successful without being clear as to why. How you're getting your results will tell you where you're headed. Too many sales managers look at the scoreboard and ignore the game.
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Stop trying to fit customers into canned, panned presentations. You wouldn't be confident about a doctor who wrote a prescription without diagnosing what's wrong, yet a lot of salespeople write ready-made prescriptions without diagnosing a customer's hot buttons, wants and needs.
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Practice presenting product knowledge more selectively. Every time a salesperson talks about something a customer is interested in he raises the value, but when he talks about things the customer doesn't care about, he raises the price.
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We distinguish between motivating and training. Managers always want to tell me what great motivators they are, but you have to do more than make them feel good - you have to upgrade their skills. It may be true that everything starts with attitude, but people still need a higher degree of competence. Otherwise, all that a great attitude does is make you more content with your failures: "Well, I'm incompetent and I lost another great deal, but I don't feel to bad about it!" If you take an idiot and motivate him, all you've got is a motivated idiot.
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If Ben Franklin were in sales, he'd have nothing on Dave Anderson. A trainer and prolific author with roots in automotive sales, Anderson slings out sales management wisdom like so much parade candy. He's a Q&A subject who doesn't need the Q's. 
