- October 5, 2006
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
When OMG evaluates sales organizations, we usually identify a number of salespeople that aren’t trainable. This finding has nothing to do with intelligence nor does it reflect on their ability to learn. As a matter of fact, these people are as smart as anyone else and learn as well as anyone else. These individuals lack an incentive to change – there isn’t a good enough reason for them to do things any differently than they are doing things now.
When this (not trainable) is applied to strong salespeople there isn’t much of a downside. But when ‘B’ and ‘C’ players have limited potential for growth (read not trainable) the consequences are quite serious. Redeployment or termination become the top two options in this scenario.
Is there a downside to training those who are not trainable? In a word, yes. Folks with little incentive to change not only don’t change, they often make it their business to make sure that your other salespeople don’t change either. They are disruptive, they dominate the training with challenges and time-consuming loaded questions, they lead the charge to convince management that training is a waste of time, and they slow down the progress for the others. When you can identify these training trouble makers in advance, your training and development efforts will show dramatic improvements.
Who are your untrainable salespeople? More importantly, which of your salespeople have significant potential for growth and would sell two or three times more as they benefited from the proper development program? OMG can help you identify those people as well as their specific development requirements to grow sales.
