Written on May 25, 2010 by John Barrows
Don’t wait for sales training
I’ve been running some training sessions recently and have come to realize that too many of us wait for our companies to invest in training for us instead of taking the initiative to invest in ourselves. What makes it worse is that most of us have been through enough bad company-funded training that we walk into the next one expecting it to be bad and therefore we don’t leave ourselves open to the possibility we might get something out of it. So, putting those two together, we rarely invest in ourselves and loath the training our companies invests in for us. That’s not a good thing when it comes to getting better at what we do.
Many of us blame the fact that we have too much going on to spend the time to read a book or go to a class and that time management is our biggest challenge. Time management is our own fault. If you listen to all the reasons you would come up with why time management is a challenge I almost guarantee most of them will sound like excuses. Time management is nothing more than focus and prioritization. Since many of us are not strong in these areas we get stuck in this rut of ‘doing’ all day long and rarely take a step back and think about what we are ‘doing’ that is actually helping us get better and move forward. If hitting your quota on a monthly basis is the only way you judge whether or not you’re getting better then congratulations you’ll be a pretty good sales rep for the rest of your life. I don’t know about you but I’m not interested in a career as a pretty good sales rep. If you don’t want to be the best, if you don’t want to be great then get out of sales and find a new career. You have to push yourself every day to get better in sales and you can’t wait for someone else to do it for you.
Here are some small things that you can do to help you get better and fit your own personal development into your schedule:
- Subscribe to a Netflix type ‘Books on CD’ club where you can rent out business/sales CDs and listen to them in the car on your way to work instead of talk radio or music. Here’s the one I subscribe to: http://www.simplyaudiobooks.com/. You can also download a ton of business/sales podcasts and books from iTunes and put them on your ipod when you’re traveling.
- Have an open mind when walking into a company-funded sales training and set a goal of learning one new thing that will help you improve.
- Once a week grab some of your colleagues for lunch and pick a topic/challenge related to sales that you can brainstorm about instead of complaining about the Celtics loss last night (ugh).
- Go down the hall and ask your CFO out to lunch or coffee and ask him/her about what their priorities are and how best to sell to them so you can learn how to speak the language of a CFO.
- Take your receptionist out to lunch and ask him/her the best way to approach and get through gatekeepers.
- Sign up to blogs and other services that will keep you updated on certain topics
- Attend webinars during non-selling hours (lunch is ideal).
- Go to a business social networking event and practice your pitch to see how people react.
- Practice sales everywhere you go, even in your personal life.
GET BETTER!
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John Barrows
Thanks for the feedback.
John Barrows
thanks for your feedback. i try to “keep it real”
John Barrows
thanks for your feedback.
John Barrows
Hi,
I apologize for taking so long to get back to you on your request. I have a template I use for tracking my own goals on a weekly basis. It’s nothing fancy but I am happy to share it with you. Here is is: Here it is. All you do is write in a few SMART goals for the week and then at the end of the week give yourself a grade of 1-10 based on how you did on that goal. for instance, if your goal was to get 4 meetings and you only got 2 then you get a 5/10 for that goal. Make sure you delete all the numbers that do not have goals associated with them so the total calculation is accurate. i usually look at 70% as the threshold for me to let me know how well I did on my goals that week (above 70% i feel good, below i could have done better). Also, the dates are auto calculating so feel free to change the first date on the top of the sheet to whichever date you want to start and it will change the rest (+7) to reflect different weeks. I usually start it on a Monday. Let me know if you have any questions. good luck and happy selling!
- John
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