Dave Stein’s December post, “Higher Education,” on the Sales & Marketing Management website reminds sales trainers that for competitive sales campaigns to succeed, they will likely need to provide learning opportunities that move beyond the basics. 

Founder and CEO of ES Research Group Dave Stein explains that salespeople typically participate in “a fairly standardized sales training curriculum, where terminology is the only significant difference from one approach to another.” Stein refers to this as Sales 101, with topics ranging from territory management to executing a sales call to negotiating and soliciting referrals. In other words, anything that falls under the categories of “building strong relationships with customers and understanding and meeting their business requirements.” 

Although important, Sales 101 training is not enough, contends Stein. Instead, training needs to broaden its framework to include advanced selling capabilities, including 

• leveraging organizational politics and influence within your customer accounts

• understanding general business and financial acumen

• deploying military-like competitive selling strategies and tactics rather than plowing headlong into every opportunity the same way. 

To learn more about this advanced selling capabilities, read the complete article on the Sales & Marketing Management website.