Before we discuss how to improve sales training, a quick promo for the latest and greatest taking place over at the ever-improving Top Sales World.  The June issue of Top Sales Magazine has been published and you can download it here.

• Among all of the important articles this month is mine on The Top 5 Reasons Salespeople Fail to Meet Quota and the Common Link to All 5 Reasons.
• Jonathan Farrington interviews Jill Konrath on her new book, Agile Selling.
• In the June issue are the Top Sales Article and Top Blog Article for May.
• They announce who are the Top 50 Sales Influencers of 2014.
• They introduce a brand new eLibrary!
• Finally, they have redesigned their website and it's better than ever!  See it here.

Cooperstown

For the last 6 years, I have been coaching and/or managing youth baseball teams and personally coaching our son since he could stand.  Monday, my wife and I had the pleasure of watching him during a baseball practice for a 12-and-under team that will be competing in Cooperstown later this summer.  It's a really big deal and it's a very talented team.

It's not just about the talent.

The coach of this team provided some very good, advanced coaching to this group of very coachable, extremely talented kids and he ran some terrific, fast-paced drills.

By comparison, the always likeable kids on a typical regular season team have skills ranging from limited to all-star caliber and everything in between.  On the regular season team, most practice time is devoted to baseball basics while not moving any faster than the speed of the average player.  

Which players and on which teams do you think show the most improvement?

If you guessed the best players, you would be half correct.  The best players, getting the advanced instruction on the travel teams, improve the most.  Those same kids, on their regular season team, learn almost nothing new and aren't challenged or pushed.  Practice, and sometimes even the games, can be so boring for them that they don't play their very best.

Translation from Baseball to Selling

If we translate all of that baseball to selling, the only two things that change are the activity and the age of the people being coached and trained.

In order for your best salespeople to improve, they need to be part of a group that won't hold them back, allowing for more advanced, faster-paced skills training.  They can be coached up very quickly if they get the right training and coaching at a pace that challenges them!

The Talent Warp

It is extremely difficult for some executives to understand this next point.  Some refuse to acknowledge that it's even possible. YOUR top salespeople, when compared with the rest of the sales population outside your industry, might only be B or C Players.  It's just not that unusual to discover that the top salespeople in some companies aren't at the top because of their skills, but because of their accounts, their assigned territory, their expertise or tenure in the industry.  It's important to note that studies show you will get the best bang for your buck when you train your B's!

When it comes to your less effective salespeople, it's important to understand that not all of them CAN be coached up and most of them have hidden weaknesses that cause difficulties becoming comfortable with what they're learning. That makes it nearly impossible for them to apply it in the field unless they are also getting extremely effective coaching from their sales managers.  They struggle to change.  That's why some of your underachievers shouldn't be trained at all.  Some of them just shouldn't be selling!

More on Baseball and Sales

If you like articles that use the baseball playing or baseball coaching analogies, then you may enjoy some of my other articles about baseball and selling:

Are You Any Good at Evaluating Sales Talent?

Improve Sales Effectiveness at the Salesperson's Hall of Fame

When it Comes to Compensation, Sales is Not Like Baseball

Baseball's Huge Impact on Sales Performance 

Sales Lessons from Baseball's 2013 World Series 

World Series, Superbowl and the Sales Force: The Rallying Cry 

Winning and Losing is Contagious 

Sales Coaching Lessons from the Baseball Files 

Making it Easy for Salespeople to Succeed