ENING METHODAccording to Dr. Frank Acito, chairman of the marketing depart-ment at Indiana University, “A high percentage—more than 50 per-cent––of our marketing graduates end up taking a sales position ofone type or another. Sales courses are helpful to them in the sensethat they give the students an opportunity to more fully understandwhat they will be expected to do once they start their job.”
Another  reason  that  it  is  helpful  to  hire  graduates  who  havedegrees in sales is that they have often learned what not to do basedupon the latest research. One former student at Indiana Universityhadn’t intended to go into sales. Even though she had the aptitudefor sales, Kristin Johnson, like many students, was reluctant to pur-sue  a  sales  career  because  she  thought  it  would  require  her  to  be“aggressive” toward other people in order to succeed. Fortunately,the  classes  at  Indiana  University  are  structured  around  the  latestresearch, which shows that in today’s modern sales world, a persondoesn’t  have  to  be  aggressive  in  order  to  succeed.  (See  also  SalesTrap 1, “You Must Be Aggressive to Succeed in Sales.”) 
After  graduating,  Kristin  took  a  sales  position  with  a  market-dominant  news  media  company  and  performed  well.  She  is  nowworking  for  an  international  pharmaceutical  corporation,  a  blue-chip company that is very selective in its hiring. 
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Kristin believes the sales classes helped her tremendously in hersales  career,  and  we  can  probably  conclude  that  Kristin  would  nothave taken a sales position if she had not taken her two sales classes.According to Kristin, “Those sales classes were instrumental in help-ing me select a career and valuable in helping me do well once on thejob.” Certainly in this sense sales classes help screen for those whohave an aptitude and are interested in sales as a career, factors thatare likely to help lead to greater efficiency on the job.
SALES RESEARCHPublished sales research is also controversial. Many people routinelydismiss validated sales research by saying that it’s not useful to prac-titioners. What have sales researchers who use academic methods orvalidated  research  been  able  to  contribute  to  the  sales  field  or  tosales courses?
One eminent sales researcher who made it to the top of the salesprofession is Neil Rackham, who observed 35,000 sales calls in 23countries over 12 years, looking for what made salespeople success-ful. Rackham performed his postgraduate work in behavioral psy-chology at the University of Sheffield in England. He is an exampleof a research academician whose strategies have greatly benefited thesales profession. Companies such as AT&T, IBM, Xerox, Microsoft,and UPS have used his research findings to help them mold theirown field sales forces into a formidable marketing tool.7
Dr. Rosann Spiro, former chairperson of the American Market-ing Association and currently a full professor at the Kelley Schoolof Business at Indiana University, has conducted studies that showthat salespeople who are more adaptive to different types of peopletend to be more successful. Dr. Barton Weitz, professor of market-ing at the University of Florida, has performed similar research inthe field of adaptive selling and the role it plays in successful salescall  outcomes.8 There  are  several  programs  that  use  this  method,including Wilson Learning, Inc., and DISC.
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There are different research methodologies used by today’s lead-ing  researchers.  Each  method  has  advantages  and  disadvantages.Three popular methods follow.
BEHAVIOR-BASED. Behavior-based researchers observe the verbal behav-iors used by the salesperson and track the outcome of the sales call.This method is expensive and takes a long time, but it is probablythe most accurate.
CUSTOMER-BASED. This  method  involves  interviewing  customers  toidentify what characteristics they prefer in salespeople. It is a rela-tively  quick  way  to  gather  information.  Unfortunately,  customerstalk in generalities, such as, “I want a salesperson who is concernedabout me” or “Follow-up is important.”
EXPERT-BASED. This  method  involves  interviewing  top-performingsalespeople  and  asking  them  why  they  have  been  successful.  Itappears  to  have  the  most  credibility  and  is  also  relatively  fast.Unfortunately, what appears to be its strength is really its draw-back:  Top  performers  don’t  always  know  what  makes  them  suc-cessful, and their opinions may run contrary to scientific researchfindings. For example, for over fifty years—from 1925 to 1980—successful trainers and salespeople believed that open-ended ques-tions led to sales call success more than closed-ended questions.This belief was refuted by original research undertaken by NeilRackham in the 1970s.9
COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES OFFERING COURSES IN SALESHistorically, sales has been treated as a second-class citizen at aca-demic institutions. But that’s beginning to change. More and moreleading  academic  institutions  are  offering  undergraduate  salescourses,  and  companies  are  seeing  the  benefit  of  hiring  graduateswho have studied sales.10 The University of Akron is one of the very
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few institutions offering a major in sales.11 The following list showssome of the institutions that offer sales courses:
Partial List of Colleges and Universities Offering Sales Courses12
Ball State University
Baylor University
Brigham Young University
Butler University
California State University, Sacramento
Central Michigan University
College of St. Catherine 
Colorado State University
Cornell
Curtin University of Technology
Florida Gulf Coast University
Indiana University 
Illinois State University
Mankato State University
Northern Illinois University 
Ohio University
Purdue University
St. Cloud State University
Texas A & M University
Tuskegee University 
University of Akron 
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University of Alabama at Birmingham
University of Central Florida
University of Cincinnati
University of Florida
University of Georgia
University of Kentucky
University of North Carolina at Wilmington
University of South Florida
University of Tennessee
University of Toledo
HIRING SALES STUDENTSTo get the most out of the best, companies are hiring more sales stu-dents. There are many people who back into sales as a career, andthese people need on-the-job training and skill building. Companieslike  Minnesota  Mining  and  Manufacturing  Co.  (3M)  want  toincrease the number of new salespeople who are already trained byhiring graduates who have studied sales. In fact, 3M is handing outhundreds of thousands of dollars to schools that are willing to teachsales skills. The College of St. Catherine in Minnesota and Tuske-gee University in Alabama are both adding sales courses with moneyfrom  3M.13 Approximately  80  percent  of  the  Kelley  School  ofBusiness’s marketing graduates take at least one sales or sales man-agement  class  before  they  graduate.  The  University  of  Akron  inOhio reports that from 1996 to 1999, every one of its sales studentswas offered a job after graduation.14
ACTION POINTS➔ Seek to hire students who have taken undergraduate sales courses. Theyknow  what  they  are  getting  themselves  into,  which  may  help
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reduce  their  failure  rate.  Investigate  the  courses  a  student  hastaken. Find out what the course methodology was and whether thestatements and findings documented in the books used are basedupon a particular research methodology or upon just one expertopinion (which may or may not be right).
➔ Use the research-based methods of the leading sales researchers. There’stoo much opinion and not enough research in sales. Take advan-tage of the work done by leading sales researchers to improve saleseffectiveness.
SALES TRUTH 5: Academic studies may reducehiring  risk,  and  academic  research  provides
validated techniques.
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sales trap 6:Either Salespeople Have It or They Don’t
Are salespeople born or made? Many people believe that they’re born.But that’s a fallacy, and if you want to get the most out of the best,don’t fall into Sales Trap 6. Salespeople are developed, and it takesthem time to develop.
“It’s easy to believe that salespeople either have it or they don’t,”says Dr. Rosann Spiro, former chairperson of the American Market-ing Association. “But the research shows that salespeople improvewith  practice  and  experience,  with  average  performers  improvingthe most.”15
Sales Trap 6 is common. “It’s in the DNA,” some claim, “so whybother trying to improve?” However, most people who develop intotop performers do so over time, rather than immediately. The sug-gestion that these people develop into top performers because “theyhad it from the get-go” and that they are just “fulfilling their des-tiny” is a fallacy that fails to recognize that top performers neededto develop along the way. 
WHAT SALESPEOPLE DO TO IMPROVEThe Dartmouth Group has observed thousands of successful sales-people and many top performers. The common denominator amongall of them was that they improved over time because they did oneor more of the following:
1. Analyzed what went right or wrong on a sales call
2. Participated in company sales training programs that pro-vided  reinforcement  and  feedback  from  front-line  salesmanagers
3. Received frequent constructive feedback from their bosses 
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4. Reviewed taped sales calls for errors and missed opportu-
nities 
5. Took part in and reviewed simulated and videotaped role-play sales situations with a manager, mentor, or colleague
Top salespeople are good at “thought process” and “thought link”development, the ability to link one issue to another in a sales callor  other  customer  conversation.  Salespeople  need  to  be  able  tothink. Thinking enables them to better understand customers’ prob-lems  and  to  link  these  problems  to  still  other  problems  the  cus-tomers may have in their companies.
Salespeople  require  development—some  more  than  others.Regardless of how they develop, it’s clear that few of the top sales-people would have achieved success without training and develop-ment. Jon King, former senior manager with Xerox and later chiefmarketing officer for Ikon Office Solutions, put it this way: “If themajority of people believe that a person is born to succeed, then whydon’t they go find them and stop investing their money in training?It’s just not that simple. Some people may have more raw talent, butwhat they do with that talent is another issue.”
DEBUNKING THE “SUPERSTAR” THEORYOne reason people defend the “either you have it or you don’t” ideais the “superstar” discovery. Occasionally, a recruiter or manager will“discover” a person who seems to have all the attributes of a suc-cessful salesperson. He or she is engaging, has strong interpersonalskills, is disciplined, has excellent grades, and always seems to suc-ceed, and the recruiter basically tells the interviewer that “what yousee is what you get.” Admittedly, what one sees is impressive. 
Why doesn’t the occasional superstar prove that “either you haveit or you don’t”? There are two factors that need to be considered:(1) The individual may have had more development opportunities
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along the way than others had, and (2) the individual may not havethe drive to be successful once he or she is on the job. For example,I recall very vividly a “superstar” that the management staff in thelocal  district  office  at  Xerox  believed  would  be  sensational.  I  toostrongly believed in this person and his credentials. 
Throughout the ninety-day training program, he led his new hiretraining  class.  One  manager  even  suggested  that  this  star  couldbecome the heir apparent to our CEO someday. All the sales man-agers wanted him on their sales team. He did turn out to be suc-cessful, but he was not considered a top performer after five years.Why did he fail to be a top performer when he had all the apparentattributes of a superstar? 
Who knows for sure? Maybe, in the end, he didn’t like the jobwell enough. There might have been too much inside and outsidepressure on him to succeed. Perhaps Xerox sales management wasto blame for not making him more accountable because they didn’tfeel that he needed to be monitored, inspected, and reviewed as rig-orously as his peers. In the end, Joe Cegala, who headed up the ser-vice  operation  in  the  central  United  States  for  NCR  a  few  yearsback,  probably  summed  it  up  the  best  with  his  favorite  motto,“Potential is interesting, but performance is everything.” 
PERSONALITY TYPE People incorrectly attribute sales success to personality. That’s thesecond reason for “either you have it or you don’t.” For example,let’s say that an individual with a dynamic and charming personalityis a top performer. It is easy to conclude that the person is a top per-former because of his personality and interpersonal skills. (This maybe partially true. Interpersonal verbal skills may give that person anedge when it comes to applying sales skills.) 
What may not be taken into account, however, is that this lik-able person may also sell more effectively. For example, he or shemay probe for the customer’s needs more effectively than an average
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performer.  Our  hypothetical  salesperson  with  the  dynamic  andcharming personality may also create more value in his or her solu-tions than an average performer. How do you account for a personwho  doesn’t  have  a  sparkling  personality  but  is  nevertheless  a  topperformer? As Susan Woods, a former training manager for a regionalbank and now with The Dartmouth Group, Ltd., observed, “Whyare there people with strong interpersonal skills that seem to remainin a ‘state of mediocrity’ while other people with average interper-sonal skills become top performers?”
If you want to get the most out of the best, develop your peo-ple. They need it (some more than others). Salespeople are made,not born.
ACTION POINTS➔ Be  patient. The  Dartmouth  Group,  Ltd.,  estimates  that  it  takesnine  to  eighteen  months  of  dedicated  effort  to  master  probingskills (asking good business questions that focus on problems andthe value of solutions) and to become unconsciously competent intheir  use.16 As  Neil  Rackham  says  of  the  SPIN® method,  “If  itwere easy, everybody would be doing it. It’s hard—that’s why thefew people who do it well are so very successful.”17
➔ Give constructive feedback. Constructive feedback tells salespeoplewhat  they  are  doing  wrong  and  shows  them  specifically  how  tocorrect it. Without feedback, sales performance and sales resultssuffer for both the individual and his or her company.
➔ Give consistent feedback that doesn’t exclude anyone. There is a ten-dency to not provide feedback to your top performers and your“heir apparent,” but this is a mistake. Top performers like solid,constructive feedback, too. That may be why they became top per-formers to begin with. Even Michael Jordan sought and receivedconstructive  feedback  from  his  coach  at  North  Carolina,  DeanSmith, and from his coach with the Chicago Bulls, Phil Jackson. 
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➔ Remember that salespeople are made, not born. It takes time for sales-people  to  get  better  and  to  develop.  The  only  way  to  fail  todevelop  is  to  give  up  (see  Sales  Trap  4,  “Rejection  Is  Failure”).Giving up on your personal development may be the only thingworse  than  failure  because  it  means  that  you  are  giving  up  onyourself, your hopes and dreams. In the movie Flashdance, Nick(Michael Nouri) says to Alex (Jennifer Beals), “Alex, without hopesand dreams, we die.” 
SALES  TRUTH  6:  Salespeople  are  developed,not born.
3PRINCIPLE
train effectively  
LEADING sales companies, such as IBM, Merck,and  Motorola,  have  highly  effective  sales  trainingprograms. Not only do they select programs based oneffective methodologies and not just on top performeropinions (see Sales Trap 5, “Academic Studies Aren’tHelpful in Real-World Sales”), but they also use theseprograms  to  increase  the  sales  team’s  efficiency  in  avariety of other ways.
COMMON LANGUAGE One  key  function  of  a  sales  training  program  is  toprovide salespeople, sales managers, and consultants
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with  a  common  language  to  reinforce  the  strategies,  tactics,  andbehaviors  taught  in  the  training  modules  (see  Sales  Trap  7).  Topsales  companies  use  sales  training  programs  to  develop  a  linguafranca, or common language, about sales. Thus, companies need tobe cautioned against throwing in the proverbial kitchen sink. If theytry  to  cover  everything  under  the  sun,  the  deluge  of  new  wordsthrown at the salespeople in a “data dump” will confuse them. Thelingua  franca  facilitates  sales  coordination,  customer  service  effi-ciency, and employee transfers. People can transfer from departmentto department or division to division within the company more effi-ciently, because they don’t have to learn an entirely new languageand culture. This common language also helps salespeople from dif-ferent departments to plan and implement cross-selling opportuni-ties more effectively.
Perhaps one of the best examples is the banking industry. Manybanks have retail people (branch banking personnel who work withconsumers) who are involved in smaller transactional selling (check-ing  accounts,  savings  accounts,  credit  card  services,  credit  lines,ATM  cards,  etc.).  Yet  they  also  have  commercial  lending  officerswho are involved in consultative selling (premium business loans andcash  management  services)  to  medium  and  large  businesses.  Thesales models used on the branch side (to sell small, simple productsand services) are different from those on the commercial bankingside  (to  sell  large,  complex  products  and  services).  In  order  toaccommodate this difference, banks with strong selling cultures usesales training programs in which the same language is adapted forboth  uses. With  the  same  sales  language,  people  from  the  branchbanking side can more easily communicate with people on the com-mercial banking side. As Gerald Rush, senior vice president of BankOne, says, “It is easier for us to cross-sell our services to our cus-tomers, thus solving more of their problems and creating deliveredvalue to them, when our people talk the same language.”
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CUSTOMIZING The training programs chosen by top sales organizations incorpo-rate the organization’s value and belief system. The courses are, ina  sense,  customized around  the  corporate  business  culture.  Thisshared value system helps to ensure that everyone in the sales orga-nization has the same values, such as “focus on the customer first”or  “maintain  strong  ethical  standards.”  For  example,  the  cus-tomization  of  a  company’s  training  program  might  include  anemphasis  on  questioning  to  display  concern  toward  the  customerrather than an emphasis on aggressive closing techniques that couldaggravate the customer and make him or her feel unimportant. If ashared value is to put customers first, then the training program andthe  customization  of  it  should  reflect  this  value,  not  counteract  it(see Sales Trap 7).
Top-flight sales organizations will often customize sales trainingfor specialized markets. They do this by outsourcing research pro-jects to a sales training and consulting research firm. Research firmsconduct field observations in order to tailor-make sales training forspecific  markets.  Eli  Lilly  followed  such  a  procedure,  as  wasexplained to me by its manager of training and development.1 To putit another way, the customizing of the content is important, sinceadults learn better when they can relate and apply concepts, mod-els, and strategies to their actual work.
A  final  thought  about  customizing:  In  general,  the  more  cus-tomized the sales training program is to the participant’s day-to-dayjob, the more effective the program will be.2 The more strategicallycustomized a sales skill training program can be, the better it will beunderstood and applied by participants. But even if the program ishighly customized, it will not be effective long if it is not reinforcedby feedback from the manager.
*  *  *
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sales trap 7:It’s the Content of the Skill Training That Matters MostManagers  spend  hours  sweating  over  all  the  sales  skill  trainingcourses available today. There’s nothing wrong with that, unless theyexpect the payoff from sales training to come solely from the contentof the training course, believing the fallacy that the content of thecourse is the most important part of training. 
It isn’t. If you want to get a performance edge from sales training, youhave  to  provide  feedback  and  reinforcement  after  the  course.Otherwise, the training won’t be effective.
FOUR BASIC TYPES OF COURSES Having said that, it’s helpful to review the four basic types of salescourses  that  are  available  on  the  market  today.  An  informed  con-sumer of sales training has to at least be familiar with these four cat-egories.  Each  category  has  a  perspective  that  seems  to  have  thepotential to make a contribution to an individual’s sales skill devel-opment. As you might expect, the quality of the program content,architecture, and exercises vary from program to program. 
ATTITUDINAL  METHOD. Probably  the  most  popular  and  widely  usedapproach to skill development in this category is Professional SellingSkills, better known as PSS. The PSS approach was developed bythe Xerox Corporation, distributed by its Xerox Learning Systemsdivision,  and  used  by  IBM,  American  Airlines,  and  Prudential,among others. Xerox used PSS until the early 1980s. Since so manycompanies used the PSS approach, it was often referred to as “theXerox course.”3
PSS focuses on the customer’s attitude, and thus it’s known as acourse that uses the attitudinal approach. The attitudinal approach
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suggests that a customer will have one of four attitudes: acceptance,indifference,  rejection,  or  skepticism.  The  seller  must  select  theappropriate communication model(s) that correspond(s) to the par-ticular attitude that the buyer displays. 
There are six communication models (the names have changed
since PSS was created):
∆ Probing
∆ Supporting
∆ Objection handling
∆ Proof 
∆ Closing 
∆ Benefit statement
For example, if a customer’s attitude is one of acceptance, a sales-person may want to use the support model, in which she or he agreeswith  the  customer’s  positive  comments,  or  the  salesperson  mightdecide to use the closing model. This approach develops a salesper-son’s conversational effectiveness by helping the salesperson to adaptreadily to the buyer’s attitude. 
ADAPTIVE OR SOCIAL-STYLE APPROACH. The second category is referred toas the adaptive or social-style approach. This method suggests thatthere  are  four  basic  social  styles  that  people  can  have. While  thenames for the four styles may vary, the intent of the program offer-ings  in  this  category  is  to  recognize  that  people  with  each  of  thefour  social  styles  process  information  differently.    Therefore,  thelogical  conclusion  of  this  approach  is  that  top-performing  sales-people should not only adapt to a buyer’s particular social style butalso  communicate  to  that  person  the  way  that  person  likes  to  be
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communicated to. For example, one set of social-style labels mightbe Driver, Expressive, Amiable, and Analytic. Let’s say a buyer is anAnalytic. The social-style approach suggests that the sales consul-tant communicate with the Analytic in detail and present thoroughand footnoted proposals. If the buyer happens to be a Driver, theconsultant would be advised to avoid detail and provide executivesummaries. The point is that this category of sales skill approachhighlights  the  idea  that  people  differ  and  that  you  need  to  adaptyour style of communication based on the particular social type youare interacting with. Programs in this category attempt to achievethree basic objectives: 
1. Be able to recognize each of the social style types
2. Be able to identify each of the types
3. Be  able  to  adapt  your  communication  style  based  upon
social type
Again, the content, architecture, and exercises will differ amongdifferent  programs,  but  the  essence  of  this  category  remains  thesame: People are different; therefore, treat them the way they wantto be treated, not the way you want to be treated. 
Perhaps the single drawback to this approach lies in the diffi-culty of correctly assessing an individual’s social style.4 For exam-ple,  an  Analytic  who  might  usually  be  considered  a  low  reactortype might be perceived as a Driver when under pressure by his orher boss to perform. The adaptive or social-style approach is aninteresting approach that is usually received well by salespeople.5Jim Cotterill, president of jcotterill.com, demonstrated the Driversocial style when he said, “Consultants visit with me and believethey should spend considerable time developing a high trust rela-tionship with me. I want to say to them, ‘I’ve got enough friends
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and acquaintances; I don’t need any more. What I need is some-one who can solve my key business problems.’”
LEARNING-STYLE APPROACH. This category suggests that each person willlearn in one of three ways: visually, auditorily, or kinesthetically. Forexample, if the buyer is primarily a visual learner, a sales consultantmight want to appeal to this person’s learning style by using graphs,charts, and pictures in the presentation. If a person is an auditorylearner, then the consultant might want to focus his or her effortson  articulating  solutions  or  implementation  processes  effectively.And  if  an  individual  learns  better  kinesthetically—by  touch  andfeel—then the consultant might invite the person to participate inthe demonstration of the product or service. 
As with the social-style category, it’s hard for the sales consultantto accurately identify the particular learning style a buyer predom-inantly uses. Continued observations regarding eye and body move-ments are necessary to help pinpoint a person’s particular style. 
NEEDS-BASED  APPROACH. Needs-based  programs  are  arguably  the  mostpopular type of training program. This approach basically suggeststhat  customers  have  two  types  of  needs:  those  associated  with  aproblem  they  are  willing  to  live  with  and  those  associated  with  aproblem they want to solve. A customer is more likely to be recep-tive to a sales solution when he or she perceives a problem that isserious enough for him or her to solve. (See also Sales Trap 3, “It’sBest to Offer Solutions to Problems You See.”) A salesperson uncov-ers problems in the first category and develops them into the sec-ond category by asking particular types of questions.6
The drawback to this approach is that it’s a big challenge to getsalespeople to ask the right type of questions. (It isn’t that difficult toidentify which types of questions salespeople should ask; what’s dif-ficult  is  getting  salespeople  to  ask  them.)  Asking  the  right  kind  ofquestions naturally and smoothly takes a lot of practice and feedback. 
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COACHING AND FEEDBACKHere’s  the  rub:  No  matter  what  course  salespeople  take,  it  won’thelp them sell better unless the sales skills are reinforced afterward.The idea that sales skill training works without reinforcement is afallacy.  In  1979,  a  study  at  Xerox  revealed  that  thirty  days  aftersales-skill-based training, the participants had lost 87 percent of thebehaviors that they had learned unless those behaviors were rein-forced.7 That  means  for  each  $1  that  Xerox  invested  in  sales  skilltraining,  it  received  only  13  cents  back.  In  other  words,  coachingand feedback is worth about 87 cents on each dollar spent. With areturn  like  this,  why  would  anyone  emphasize  the  content  of  thecourses over coaching and reinforcement?
More than the content of courses, it’s coaching, feedback, rein-forcement,  and  implementation  that  are  the  keys  to  behaviorchanges  that  increase  sales  effectiveness.    Managers  from  seniormanagement all the way down to first-line management (with sup-port from the sales training department) should see to it that coach-ing is taking place. 
Karen  Thor,  executive  vice  president  and  CIO  of  NationalCommerce  Bancorporation,  put  it  succinctly:  “We  purchased  thebest