Why on-site sales training fails and wastes your money!
Author: Guy Petrik, President, SalesPro Online

A company schedules a sales meeting, perhaps just for sales training (worst case) perhaps also including other business issues, new product introduction and/or product training.

Management feels that sales could be much better, given the current product acceptance and market conditions (virtually always true) and decides to have 1, 2 or three days of sales training to improve sales effectiveness.

Occasionally, someone in-house is qualified or semi-qualified to conduct sales training, but more frequently, an outside sales trainer is hired to come in and conduct training.

For many years, I was fortunate to be one of those trainers hired to improve sales during sales meetings and virtually all trainers do their very best, so I absolutely intend no disrespect to any sales trainer, but…….

It really doesn’t work! And it is expensive!

And if you ask most sales trainers, they will honestly tell you that they (and you) would be pleased if each of the salespeople left training with one new idea they would use effectively to improve their selling!

Why doesn’t on-site sales training work?

1. Attention Span

Human beings have a relatively short attention span (and it is getting shorter)! Test yourself, try to notice how long you pay attention to anything (even a great movie) without thinking of something else. It is not long, definitely not 6-8 hours with 2 or 3 short breaks!

Unfortunately, a seminar goes on, even when someone’s attention is absent. Good trainers are aware of this and use humor and questions to try to keep salespeople involved but it is a losing battle and the tactics to fight this natural limitation waste even more time.

Compound this problem with the fact that not every salesperson shows up in optimal condition to learn. They may have other family or job problems on their mind, might not be in the best of health, and every sales trainer knows the horror of conducting training the morning after the sales banquet and late night party!

Keeping each salesperson’s attention to catch 20% of the material on the average would be an achievement to be proud of! Does this sound like the optimal learning situation?

2. Time Limitations

Even three 8 hour days of solid training is not a significant amount of time to learn a profession. “Oh, but they already know their profession, this is just a refresher,?you say! Where and when were they taught the profession of selling? In high school? College?

And selling definitely is a profession with definable actions that produce predictable results, so it can be taught and can be learned. This is painfully obvious when a highly skilled, professional salesperson annihilates a congenial novice salesperson (even with good product knowledge) on the sales battlefield.

Think of how you learned a subject in college. Did you learn it in short presentations with subsequent self-study governed by your attention span? Did you write papers, or take tests that required you to take concepts and apply them, facilitating even deeper learning and retention? Is it by accident that all higher learning follows the format used in colleges?

Does the 8 hour per day, 2 or 3 day verbal presentation sound like the optimal learning situation?

3. Learning Speed and Need

Does every salesperson need the same amount of help on each aspect of selling? Do they all learn at the same speed? Are they motivated to learn at the same time? This is how on-site seminars are conducted, everyone must spend the same amount of time on the same material, learn it at the same speed and all at the same time!

Do you think this bores the fast learner or loses the slow learner? You bet it does and wastes much of the seminar time for most salespeople! And regarding the subject of asking questions when lost; most salespeople won’t risk the embarrassment in front of their peers and managers.

Salespeople tune out when they don’t feel the material covers a subject they need help on or when they get don’t understand a concept. And there is no alarm clock to help salespeople tune back in when they could be learning something.

And the seminar surely is not repeated on the dark night after the salesperson loses a crucial sale and realizes that he or she needs better tools for the next day in front of the customer and motivation to learn is at a peak. How can someone review a verbal 8 hour sales training presentation?

Does this sound like optimal learning?

4. Use of Learned Material

So far we’ve seen that there are formidable barriers to learning in on-site seminars. However, let’s say there are some useful concepts that get through to your salespeople, what guarantees that they will make the leap to apply them to their product or service, in their selling environment and actually use the concepts to improve sales?

It rarely happens. The vast majority of salespeople leave the seminar, mildly entertained, moderately pumped up and use absolutely nothing from the seminar when they get buried in the details of their work week on Monday.

The best method of insuring that salespeople use more effective selling concepts to improve their sales is to have them prepare, in writing, exactly what they are going to say and do in front of their customers to improve their sales.

And the preparation of these “selling strategies?must be specific to their own products and services in their selling environment comprised of their customer type and their competition.

The 8 hour per day on-site seminar doesn’t offer the time for each salesperson to assimilate successful selling concepts and prepare to sell effectively in front of customers by creating, in writing:

- An effective appointment request that references a customer benefit?
- A good introduction of themselves and their company in a manner that conveys a win-win situation?
- Good questions to identify customer needs and create needs that competition cannot satisfy?
- A good presentation with a focus on customer benefits?
- How to effectively handle the most common objections?
- Multiple ways to close or advance the sale depending on the situation?

Doesn’t preparation of “company specific selling strategies?that salespeople can take out into the field and review before a sales call, or use during a sales call, sound more effective than some vague concepts floating in short term memory and a warm fuzzy feeling?

What are all of the costs associated with on-site training?

A. Meeting Costs

These vary depending on location of the salespeople and the training site, however, they often include airfares, auto travel, hotels, meals, entertainment, telephone, etc.

Some managers rationalize that they need to bring the salespeople together for a meeting for some other reason, so the sales training doesn’t add a cost. A useful question to ask considering the lack of effectiveness of sales training might be: “Would you keep the salespeople at the meeting for another 1, 2 or 3 days to lay out in the sun??

B. Seminar Costs

Good sales trainers cost from ,000 to ,000 for an on-site seminar depending on their track record and name recognition. Generally, companies can figure another -100 dollars for materials and probably some audio-video rental costs.

C. Lost Selling Time

The Big One! Good managers realize that lost selling time is their single biggest expense of a sales training meeting.

A company with million in sales loses 0,000 in sales every day their salespeople are not in the field selling! (m / 250 selling days per year = 0,000, you can easily figure your own losses.)

Occasionally managers will rationalize saying it is a slow time, or we’ll have it on the weekend (as if salespeople don’t make up their weekend somehow) and some managers even try to ignore selling time lost in travel and preparation for being out of the field.

Don’t be fooled, a 2 day sales seminar with a day on each side for travel and 2 half day preparation and recovery time will cost a m company 0,000 in lost selling time alone!








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SalesPro Online was developed by a sales trainer who delivered on-site sales training for 20 years. Knowing the limitations of on-site training, he developed this Internet-based training which is more effective and less expensive.Please visit http://www.4moresales.com/ for a sales training alternative that makes sense and gets results!

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