Training Yourself When The Company Won’t Help

Hello and thanks for visiting.

One of the subjects I keep returning to is sales training.
To me it is the most important thing to a salesman’s career.

To succeed in anything you need to practice.
Look at sports stars, they haven’t gotten their on talent alone. They work hard every day to be as good as they can. It is what it takes to be successful.
That is why I feel that sales shouldn’t and isn’t any different.

One problem that I have addressed many times though is that companies don’t give sales training time it needs.
It isn’t prioritized as it takes time from the regular sales activities.

So as a salesman what can you do if your company won’t help you with sales training?

First of all, you can talk to your company about it.
Tell them that you want to improve and that you feel that getting training everyday, or even only once a week, would do miracles to your results.

If that doesn’t work, start listening to other salesmen around you.
Talk to the best salesmen at your company and ask them if you can listen to them making phone calls, audit a meeting and if they can give you feedback on your presentation.
This technique is great as you will almost never get the answer “no” to this request.
People are honoured to help and happy that you respect them so much to ask them for help. Often they might go above and beyond and take you under their wing.

This gives you a great basis, but you will of course want more. You want to be better than the best salesmen. This takes that you find other forms to learn by.

The fact that you are reading this blog proves that you are ambitious and I will hopefully be able to give you a lot of advice on how to improve you sales. For example you can download my free ebook (if you havn’t already) “Double Your Income” by filling out you email address in the right hand side bar.

This brings me to my favourite way of learning.
Books!
I strongly believe that books are the source of all knowledge.

Find books written by some of the top minds in the industry and incorporate their tips and advice into your style. I use Amazon to find my books as it has a lot of customer reviews telling us what others who have read the books think. They also give advice about other books you might find interesting and has good service.

If books aren’t your thing, DVDs are another way to learn.
If you learn better by watching and listening than reading this is the way to go. Their are a lot of great DVDs out their that give great advice and tips on the mechanics of different parts of the sales process. Again I must recommend Amazon as they have a broad selection of great DVDs.

Often I suggest you use DVDs as a substitute for going to seminars as you can watch them again and again and again. Dissecting and finding all of the good tips for you.
But going to seminars helps you meet other like minded people and that network can really help you in your future success.
If you are lucky you could find a veteran salesmen, or even the speaker him/herself, and get them to take you under their wing.

This is what I do to get outside advice and tips to improve.

Other things you can do yourself is;
- Practice my presentation, over and over again so that I know it in my sleep.

- List every argument that my customers use or that I think they might use and come up with counter arguments to each.
If I am really on a role, I will list their counter-counter arguments and come up to answers to them as well.

- You can also work on your closing techniques, how and when to go for the close.

- And last but not least as it brings together everything you have learned: Role-Playing.
Find a colleague or a friend and have them pretend to be a customer. Use every technique you can, to close the deal.
That way you can try out and see what feels natural to you, what works and what doesn’t.

I hope you found this useful. If you have any questions or any tips on other ways to train, please leave a comment.

//Daniel

Related posts:

1. How much sales training do I need?
2. Truths And Myths pt. 3 – Do We Need Sales Training?
3. The Importance Of Sales Training
4. How To Conduct The Training Of An Employee
5. Sales Training – Daily Meetings to Stay on Top of Things