The Incredible Cost of Untrained Salespeople Top Secrets of Marketing & Sales
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- Marketing
There are so many situations where inadequate product knowledge, damaged reputation, and inefficient or poorly executed sales processes come from having untrained salespeople.
David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today's episode, co host Jay McFarland and I will discuss the incredible cost of untrained salespeople. Welcome back, Jay.
Jay: Hey, it's such a pleasure to be here, David. Sometimes I think I'm that guy. I'm the untrained salesperson. So, this will be very informative to me, I hope.
David: Okay. Well, you know, there's a difference between being untrained and untrainable. So, as long as you're trainable, that's a really big plus.
Jay: OK, I feel a little better.
David: No, I'm sure you're trainable, but untrained salespeople can really cause a great deal of harm to themselves, to their companies, to their prospects, to the businesses they're associated with.
It is really kind of epidemic and It's largely unnecessary. A lot of it comes from, particularly in small businesses an employers desire to delegate it quickly, to get it off their plate.
Like, "okay, I'm not doing this as well as I'd like. I better hire somebody else to do it." And they're hoping that that person is going to know how to do it.
And if you don't have protocols in place, like we talked about in our previous podcast, then of course that just makes it that much more difficult. But the biggest problems that people are likely to run into, the obvious ones are lost sales opportunities, right?
Cause I'm talking to somebody who could potentially buy, but I'm saying all the wrong things and I'm not positioning the company well, and I'm not finding the right needs that the people are actually looking for, and I'm saying the wrong things, there's no way that sales is going to happen.
It's a bad reflection on the salesperson and the company, and the prospect will walk away thinking that that company is not good at what they do because the salesperson did not do a good enough job of explaining what they do.
So, it creates a complete disconnect between what the business might be capable of and what the world is likely to think they're capable of. So that's a killer.
Poor communication is another one that when you have a salesperson who is not trained on what they need to ask, what they need to find out from the prospect, how they need to address those questions and issues, that defines poor communication, because they're just going to say whatever comes to their mind or they're going to say, "well, I have to find out, let you know."
Now there are situations in pretty much any sales scenario where that might be the case, where you don't have every single bit of information that they might need to know. So there will be situations where you might have to find something out.
But if it's happening more than a couple of times at any particular sales presentation, you might want to look at the process that you're using to make that happen.
The training that you have or have not received. Actually, this really does dovetail pretty well in our previous conversation about protocols. So if you're seeing this podcast and you didn't see that one, go back and watch that one as well because these things really tie together.
Jay: Yeah, a couple of things come to mind.
And the first is, how do you know you have an untrained salesperson? If they are not where you're at, if they're doing outside sales and they're sitting in somebody else's office, how do you know what they're saying and how they're interacting?
That can be very difficult. The second thing is if they're on the phone making those calls, how do you assess their situation there?
Like I said earlier,
There are so many situations where inadequate product knowledge, damaged reputation, and inefficient or poorly executed sales processes come from having untrained salespeople.
David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today's episode, co host Jay McFarland and I will discuss the incredible cost of untrained salespeople. Welcome back, Jay.
Jay: Hey, it's such a pleasure to be here, David. Sometimes I think I'm that guy. I'm the untrained salesperson. So, this will be very informative to me, I hope.
David: Okay. Well, you know, there's a difference between being untrained and untrainable. So, as long as you're trainable, that's a really big plus.
Jay: OK, I feel a little better.
David: No, I'm sure you're trainable, but untrained salespeople can really cause a great deal of harm to themselves, to their companies, to their prospects, to the businesses they're associated with.
It is really kind of epidemic and It's largely unnecessary. A lot of it comes from, particularly in small businesses an employers desire to delegate it quickly, to get it off their plate.
Like, "okay, I'm not doing this as well as I'd like. I better hire somebody else to do it." And they're hoping that that person is going to know how to do it.
And if you don't have protocols in place, like we talked about in our previous podcast, then of course that just makes it that much more difficult. But the biggest problems that people are likely to run into, the obvious ones are lost sales opportunities, right?
Cause I'm talking to somebody who could potentially buy, but I'm saying all the wrong things and I'm not positioning the company well, and I'm not finding the right needs that the people are actually looking for, and I'm saying the wrong things, there's no way that sales is going to happen.
It's a bad reflection on the salesperson and the company, and the prospect will walk away thinking that that company is not good at what they do because the salesperson did not do a good enough job of explaining what they do.
So, it creates a complete disconnect between what the business might be capable of and what the world is likely to think they're capable of. So that's a killer.
Poor communication is another one that when you have a salesperson who is not trained on what they need to ask, what they need to find out from the prospect, how they need to address those questions and issues, that defines poor communication, because they're just going to say whatever comes to their mind or they're going to say, "well, I have to find out, let you know."
Now there are situations in pretty much any sales scenario where that might be the case, where you don't have every single bit of information that they might need to know. So there will be situations where you might have to find something out.
But if it's happening more than a couple of times at any particular sales presentation, you might want to look at the process that you're using to make that happen.
The training that you have or have not received. Actually, this really does dovetail pretty well in our previous conversation about protocols. So if you're seeing this podcast and you didn't see that one, go back and watch that one as well because these things really tie together.
Jay: Yeah, a couple of things come to mind.
And the first is, how do you know you have an untrained salesperson? If they are not where you're at, if they're doing outside sales and they're sitting in somebody else's office, how do you know what they're saying and how they're interacting?
That can be very difficult. The second thing is if they're on the phone making those calls, how do you assess their situation there?
Like I said earlier,