Recessionary Times - Beat it.

As the global economy has changed over the past 12 months or so, more and more people are turning to Sales training courses to help them secure more sales. Never have we seen such a change in the world, people who had money burning holes in their pockets 12 months ago no longer have the same emphasis on spending.

If we look at all the equity people had in their homes that gave them a sense of security which again led to spending without fear, then couple that with the way banks were giving out money and it’s easy to see why so many people bought, bought, bought, and made the job of sales so easy----but how things have changed!

For the past number of years companies have not had to worry about sales training as the economy was buoyant and sales people with the title of sales people did generally not need to fight for business. In fact to be honest in many industries they were order takers as opposed to salespeople. With this in mind many of today’s sales people have never had to sell and therefore have had no real need to discover the art of closing sales. As many prospects had money in their pockets were prepared to purchase anyway.

Based on personal experience I will try and explain what I mean:

If you were buying a new car in 1990 sales people would be trying every close in the book to sell the car to you. In fact they were even offering you a full weekend test drive, where you could take the car for the weekend to try and help you make the decision. In these times Sales training programmes and sales skills were badly needed as the market was tough. Formal training was a must for numerous companies and only the sharpest and fittest survived.

Now roll on the clock 15 years to 2005 and see how difficult it was to take a car for a test drive for 30 minutes never mind a weekend. The problem was the market had changed and if you don’t buy the car some one else will come in shortly after you and they will buy it. I understand this is generalising and it is not fair to paint everyone with the same brush. However this meant sales training skills were not seen as a priority.

The same can be said for numerous industries, another example of this is the real estate business where purchasers trying to get on the property ladder were at times camping outside new housing developments ove
ight to secure a property. You have to ask the question how much sales training skills would the real estate agent need in this type of market?

The difficulty now from a sales training point of view is that many people who were recruited as sales people over the last number of years, are for the first time having to use the type of sales training skills that can be learned from attending courses.

More and more companies are turning to sales training programmes to up skill their salespeople to close more sales as the cycle has turned again and we are back to only the sharpest and fittest surviving.