To improve their skills, sales people often attend training courses. As someone who runs a training company this is something to be applauded and encouraged.  In my ideal world sales people would feel the need to attend a training session of some sort every week.  However, financial constraints often put a limit on how many courses a sales person can attend and so sales people end up attending workshops every so often at best, unless their employers are totally committed to a training culture and invest huge amounts of money and time to develop their team.

So given that the average sales person is only likely to attend one or two courses per year, what else can the sales person do to develop their skills?  Training often provides momentum, and sales people often return from a course full of enthusiasm and new ideas.  They are keen to put into practice what they have learnt and try to use new ideas.  In short, the course has done its job.  No one or two day course will change behaviours completely but it can start the process.

At the start of most years, many people join gyms and head off to their first workout with great gusto and enthusiasm; they meet an inspirational instructor who talks them through what they need to do in order to get fit.  After the first session they leave, excited and ready to become a fit, healthy, powerful, Adonis!  What happens next? Most people struggle to put into action what the instructor suggested.  They slip back into bad habits.

As do sales people.  After leaving the course, the temptation to return to what they used to do is strong.  To use what they have learnt, they must adopt a strong mentality.  Same as the gym goer, if the lifestyle around the gym sessions does not change the progress will be slower.  I know that people say that going to the gym means that they can drink as much as they like and eat loads of cream cakes, but that seems to be a “treading water” tactic rather than a progressive tactic.

So my advice for you as a sales person is: go on a sales course, learn some new ideas and techniques, come back raring to go!  Then think about how you will adopt the new ideas and stick to them.  Try to break habits.  Sales people often return to tried and tested methods more through habit than anything else.  People do things in a certain way because they have always done them that way.  A sales person should always evaluate what they are doing.  At the end of each week, write a list of what worked, what didn’t and what you could change.  Try wearing your watch on the opposite wrist to what you are used to, see how it feels.  After a week or so it will feel more comfortable and after a month or so, you will wonder why you ever wore it on the other wrist.  This will remind to try to use something new.  Try a new route to work… basically, try anything that breaks the routine, this will help you to adopt new techniques and give you the mentality to stick to them.

At the end of the month or the quarter, evaluate again.  Ask yourself, honestly, how are you doing?  What did I do this month that was better than last month, different to last month, worse than last month and therefore what can I change for next month?  To get fit, you could go to the gym or run round the park but to get really fit and make permanent changes to your health, your lifestyle will have to change as well.  I know it’s not quite the same thing but you can see the connection, I hope.  Sales people must adapt their approach to make real sustainable changes to their performance.  Constant evaluation, habit changing tactics and the setting of personal objectives are three things that could be done to make ongoing changes.  Einstein’s definition of insanity crops up on many training courses, sometimes not always relevant but I think to most sales people it is applicable:  “when a person does the same thing over  and over and expects to get a different result”.