Failure of Salespeople is Self-Imposed by Companies

Andy Paul, author and founder of the Sales House says that the sales profession is in a self-imposed crisis. Companies spend freely to hire salespeople only to find them fail and then they simply fire them and hire more like them. Seldom does a company look into the reasons for the expensive turn-over. They certainly don’t examine their own on-boarding and training processes. Sales managers are often to blame for hiring glib people who don’t have the skills to sell, but no one questions them. These “salespeople” get occasional coaching, but they don’t get sales skill training from their company, and few of them take the time to learn on their own. Of course, they learn features and benefits of their products but it usually ends there. In this interview, Andy Paul discusses: The gap in the sales training industry Why human aspects of training are overlooked Why sales “professionals” don’t take time to learn on their own The consequences of companies failing to train new and senior salespeople Why salespeople fail to take ownership of their own professional development About Andy Paul I’ve grown and managed large sales teams from scratch. I’ve coached average performers into being top producers. And, yet, every new position I took on in my career presented a challenge and required that I re-invent myself. I had to educate myself about new technologies, new solutions, new products, new customers and their unique requirements. Every single day I had to take the responsibility to make myself smarter and better. There was no training that would do that. It was this experience of assuming responsibility for my own career education; of using day to day learning to power my way to whatever successes I achieved, that inspired me to start my own company in 2000. Since then I’ve been on a mission to educate sales leaders and sales professionals about the power of continuous learning to transform how they perform. My message is getting out and more and more people are paying attention. I’m #8 on LinkedIn’s list of the Top 50 Global Sales Experts to follow. More than 140,000 people have signed up to follow the advice I share there. My podcast, Accelerate!, is on the top of every list of the best sales podcasts with nearly 2 million downloads to date. Accelerate! is also on INC’s list of the top leadership podcasts. My two award-winning books, Zero-Time Selling and Amp Up Your Sales, were both Amazon best-sellers.     About the Sales House The sales House offers 400+ Hours of World-class Sales Education.  Everything You Need to Create A Fulfilling and Financially Rewarding Sales Career... And We Mean EVERYTHING! I built my career by following the advice of a wise man who said that in life you should try to: “Learn something about everything. And, everything about something.” You should too. To help you achieve this I’ve laid out 400+ hours of sales instruction into 21 categories, that encompass 41 unique sales topics. We have “something about everything”. What is the “everything about something” you must learn about sales? It’s about the human element of selling. It’s about how to connect and engage the interest of another human, to build trust and inspire them to take action. In short, it’s about relationships.