I just read a great Blog Post by Dave Kurlan about the difference between sales skills and sales effectiveness. I encourage you to give it a read. Now.
It reminded me of my own experience. One summer during college I sold Cutco knives. They had a full day training session when I joined up. There were 20-30 of us getting trained. At the end of the day the lead trainer came up to me and said that they always pick one trainee that they think will be the top sales rep out of the group – and he picked me! I wasn’t totally surprised – because I was an arrogant 20 year old. But I would soon be eating humble pie, because I was not the top sales rep, nowhere close to it. In fact, my best customer turned out to be my future mother-in-law. Even though I had the sales skills, I didn’t really have the will to sell (which is another trait our OMG tools measure in a sales rep or candidate).
I’m sure there are some reps out there like me – able but not really willing to do what it takes to get the sale. Others may stumble due to internal sales processes that frustrate them. There’s much more to sales than sales skills, as important as they are. If you are a sales rep or sales enablement professional, what barriers to sales success do you see tripping reps up?
