I will be recording a video discussion with Anthony Miller, founder of Guru Sales Training, about whether marketing or sales training is more important for companies seeking sales growth. Before meeting with Anthony, I’m using this post to share my initial thoughts and I hope to hear what you think so I can refine my points.
To be clear, I value sales training. Every company I worked for offered training of some sort—and I always signed up because I had a lot to learn. For many years, I thought that selling was an ability that some people had and others didn’t. I didn’t think that being a good salesperson was something that could be learned. But once I learned from sales training to think about selling as a process, I started to manage my efforts and saw my sales increase dramatically while feeling much less pressure.
Having thus benefited from sales training, I am the last person to denigrate its value. As far as driving revenue, however, marketing trumps sales training for many reasons. Here are my top three:
Opportunity
Before the Internet, buying choices were simpler. Whether we wanted a book, an airline ticket, an insurance policy or practically any other product or service, most of us knew where to go. If we wanted to expand the universe of possibilities, we turned to the Yellow Pages (a book that most people under 30 probably never open and are more likely to use as door stop).
With fewer shopping choices, the differentiator between successful and failing companies was often the ability to turn sales opportunities into actual purchases. Today, in contrast, we live in a world with many options. Buyers are one computer click away from discovering hundreds if not thousands of sellers offering the same or comparable products or services. The best sales people in the world will not be successful if their companies fail to break through the commercial clutter and attract prospects and past customers with effective marketing campaigns.
Credibility
Do you like having a sales person try to sell you something? Many people, myself included, are inherently suspicious when sales people tries extol the features and benefits of a certain product or service over others since we believe that they will say anything to close a sale.
In contrast, good marketing, such as a well-written, clearly organized, search engine optimized website with lots of third party veracity (i.e., positive press and client testimonials), provides us with valuable information that we can utilize to make an informed buying decision without any sales pressure.
Quality
As a salesperson, my pet peeve was spending time with somebody who was a poor prospect. Every day, millions of salespeople worldwide are expected to pitch their products or services to people who aren’t viable buyers. While some of these pitches will work due to the law of averages and tenacity, there is a lot of sales effort wasted on people who are unlikely to buy.
Successful companies take time to study their customers’ interests and behaviors and create products, services, and marketing that fulfills these needs. There is nothing better for creating a steady stream of outstanding prospects than excellent products and services which are communicated clearly in the right marketing channels.
Do you feel that marketing trumps sales training for companies seeking growth? If so, do you agree with my reasons or do you have others? Alternatively, if you don’t agree, please let me know so I can shore up my arguments before recording the video with Anthony that I’ll post to this blog.
