Increase Sales Blog

Posts Tagged ‘sales research’

Sales research indicating:

• 50% of all sales leads are left to wither on the vine to die
• 80% of all salesperson stop after the 3rd contact
• 30%-70% of all sales targets are not achieved

What this suggests to me is there is a just a lot of plain laziness out there in the marketplace and very few people are talking about this using this word.

Laziness is so prevalent in our society (U.S.) I am surprised that anything gets down.  The majority of people are born both mentally and physically fit.  However due to a variety of reasons, laziness takes over. With the prevalent entitlement mentality, productivity suffers while other costs such as health care to the price of retail goods continue to spiral upward.  The U.S. and even Britain’s obesity rates confirm this change in behavior and the additional costs.

Just look at the parking lot of any grocery or retail store. How many carts are left stranded in parking places because someone was just to darn lazy to return the cart to one of those cart holding stands?

This laziness also has a much deeper meaning and that is total, 100% disrespect for all those other shoppers who have to weave around those unintended shopping carts.  (Think ethics and beliefs) Heavens forbid if it is a windy day and a sudden gust takes the cart and slams it into your vehicle or worse yet child! My sense is many of those lazy people would be the first to complain if their car damaged or their child harm by a stray shopping cart.

When people are lazy in sales, in  business and in life, their behaviors affect everyone else because of their poor business ethics. This is why it is important to focus on what you can control and have an action plan to support that focus.

As one final note for this Friday’s editorial, if you choose to be lazy, then do not expect others to pick up your slack.  For you have 100% of what actions you take from picking up that phone to call a potential customer to what food you place into your mouth.  Personal responsibility and accountability are key attributes or talents not only for professional sales people but everyone else as well.

After spending billions of dollars in public education, a recent report shows that mathematics scores are on the rise in urban, big city schools. Excuse my “duh” moment, but given the investment why are we applauding this? My question is why haven’t they been delivering results for the last 40 years?

Public education and sales training have this one common factor – poor return on investment (ROI). Most sales training depending upon the sales research delivers anywhere between zero to 10% positive return on investment. The failure factors are many, but are probably linked more to how public education than many realize.

After all, if public education knew how to construct engaged learning environments, then we would not continue to realize such dismal test scores. Given that human beings are creatures of conditioning, corporate education, learning, training and development is based upon the K-16 experiences. And given those results, why should we be surprised that so much sales training delivers a negative return on investment?

In a recent article, Top 10 Not So Common Reasons Why Sales Training Fails to Deliver Sustainable Change, I provided some out of the box reasons why sales training and development fails to stick. My most favorite one is the brain only absorbs what the butt will endure.

Effective sales training and development is possible. However, some key beliefs need to be changed including:

• Looking for the quick fix
• Entitlement mentality
• Teaching means someone knows how to apply knowledge
• Knowledge is power
• Life long learning

When these beliefs are changed because beliefs drive actions (behaviors) generating results, then sales training or any educational process should begin to deliver positive return on investment.

Why do you think sales training fails? Please leave your comments.