This is why most sales training never sticks

My pleasure. It's really great to be with you today.

So track selling was founded in 1958. So we've been in business for over 65 years, almost 70 years now. It was originally started by a guy named Max Sachs. Max sold the company to a guy named Roy Chitwood in the mid-70s. And Roy really grew it and refined what we call the track selling methodology, which is a sales methodology, a simple, straightforward communications technique that works. just about in any industry and and actually for professional and personal communication. Roy died in twenty fifteen and the company sort of languished, I'll say, as a result of that. And in twenty nineteen, Ron and I, Ron has been my partner Ron Home, had been a trainer for the track selling system for 30 years. And he and I decided that we would resurrect the track selling system. And so we started the track selling institute. And we were off to a good start with in-person training and then COVID hit and that didn't work out so well. So we moved to pretty much a virtual model and then we refined that and that's pretty much been our model ever since. So we trained people all over the world, but primarily right now in the US. And we teach them the track selling methodology. So that's that's our background. And I Ron does primarily the selling and training and I do the operations stuff, marketing and back end systems. And I'll do training occasionally too, but pretty much that's how we split our responsibilities.

Well, I was I graduated from college and I got lucky and got invited to join a company that had a nine month trail sales training program. And so I I did that. It was eight weeks of classroom training and then the rest was being mentored by other salespeople and sales engineers. So I started that. But in nineteen eighty mid eighties Can't remember exactly. I had the the pleasure of going through the track selling system. and actually I had hired Ron at a company that we worked at, and we both went through the training together. And that was my first introduction to a formal sales training, other than the training that I'd gotten before that, and to the track selling methodology. So it's it's I've been exposed to it or or working with it for many, many years now.

Well, the the key is that if you don't have them together, the likelihood of you achieving success is much less. So and and I think marketing tends to be fairly isolated in a lot of companies. They don't really work with the sales organization and they don't really listen to what salespeople really need. If you look at The traditional tools, brochures, PowerPoint presentations, et cetera, that marketing provides, advertising, clearly. a lot of times those are disconnected from the reality of what the salesperson is confronting every day when they go out and and make calls or or make phone calls. So if if they aren't connected together, they're really working at cross purposes. They're really working against each other. And clearly that's not. the right formula for success. So I think the important thing, and and I believe that sales takes the lead here, being a a a strong sales proponent, that sales takes the lead and and should and marketing should be responsive to what the needs of the salespeople are. And they should be out in the field with the salesperson, understanding what a call looks like, what a a phone call requires From the person, what kind of follow-up materials they need. And a lot of times, again, in most organizations, especially larger ones, that's disconnected. Marketing thinks they know what the customer wants or what the salesperson wants, and they go ahead and produce materials that are irrelevant. whether it's a a brochure that doesn't really address the concerns that the customer has or a presentation that you know, talks about. issues or concerns that the customer doesn't relate to, it it's all it's a it's a major point of disconnect.

Yeah, the I think the issues are really around listening to the customer or the prospect and really understanding what they're saying. people are so anxious to sell their solution that they sort of bowl through the listening part and they just assume that they know what the customer wants. And and that's where the major misalignment happens. if you don't listen to the customer and really dig deep into what their real concerns are, their pain points in the traditional terminology, you have the possibility or the probability actually of misconstruing what their real need is. In our methodology, we have a a step, we have a seven-step process, but at the third step is agreement on need. And this is a a very critical point In the sales process or the buying process, if you're looking at it from the customer standpoint. Because if you don't have an agreement on need, if you don't understand what the client or or prospect is wanting, then the likelihood of to succeeding through the rest of the conversation or through the sales process is extremely low. And so by listening well and by capturing that in a summary at you know, an early point in the sales process, you have a much higher probability of completing the sale if everybody agrees on what problem they're trying to solve. You know, it's a it's a pretty obvious thing, but it's a lot of times something that most salespeople ignore or forget. And and so they continue down the path. They again they assume that they know what the customer wants. They assume that they have a solution that's gonna fix their problem and they end up just totally misdirecting and misconnecting on all the key points that would allow them to sell something to them.

Well, the biggest issue is it's typically one and done. People will go to a sales training session. They'll go, they'll come out of it extremely fired up. Hey, I've I've got new ways to solve problems. They get back to their desk on Monday morning and there's a pile of post-it notes or or callbacks, there's contracts to execute, there's customer problems to deal with. And guess what? They revert back to their old habits very, very easily. So the real reason, I think, is that people don't practice what they what what is preached in the sales training. And we're addressing that now. we've been we've been guilty of that also. We have a lot of reinforcement tools that we provide after the training, but a lot of them don't. meet the need. So we're coming out with a tool called track coach that allows you to role play the exercises that we practice in the tr in the workshop and build those skills. It takes, you know, I've heard 20 days, 30 days for a new habit to be formed. And if you don't practice that, then the likelihood of you forming a new habit is extremely low. So that reinforcement training is critical. And we realized that after talking to hundreds of of customers, and we have now developed a tool called TrackCoach that addresses that. And we think that's gonna be a very, very critical piece in terms of getting the learning to stick.

It does. Yep. Very extensively, yep.

I have not experienced the SDR tools specifically, but I think the world is still casting about on how AI fits into the sales process. I think that the the goal to replace SDRs or anybody in the sales process with AI is a little bit misleading or or misappropriate. And the reason is because. People really want to talk to a human being. and more and more as we're coming out of COVID, our experience is that people that were field sales people, whether they're selling car alignment systems or retail tools or whatever, really miss that personal interaction. And it's both on the salesperson side and on the customer. And we're finding sort of an overreaction, if you want to call it, to AI, and people saying, hey, I just want to talk to somebody, and ideally talk to that person in person, face to face. And and so I think people that are looking to replace SDRs or anybody in the sales process are using the technology inappropriately. We believe that AI is a good supplement. makes the per makes the salesperson more effective, makes them more efficient, and gives them the tools to deal with all of the stuff that goes around the sales process. If you look at the typical analysis of what a salesperson spends on a weekly basis, usually more than half of their time is administrative. They're not really selling. And so if if you can address that administrative burden by making it easier to record calls or to prioritize your work or to better understand the customer or prospect, then you're using AI appropriately, in my opinion. you know, it's it's possible that eventually some of the people that are in the sales process, whether they're on the front end, like SDRs. or on the back end like customer service reps could be replaced by AI, but I think we're a long way from that actually working. And and that's a combination of the technology maturity and also of the customer adoption of those technologies. You know, people I I I find that people probably your age, younger folks, my daughter and her s and my son are Reacting against AI and really looking for more of that face-to-face or person-to-person communication as opposed to talking to AI. So I think I think we're I think the pendulum is starting to swing now a little bit more back to human-to-human connections. And I think that's really good. And so our our philosophy at track selling is how can we supplement, how can we provide tools to the salesperson that make them more efficient. and more capable as opposed to replacing i any of them at any point in the cycle.

Yeah, no, I agree a hundred percent.

Well, we're focusing primarily on LinkedIn. that's where our prospects live. we've been doing outbound campaigns through LinkedIn, and we're having some success. We're early in the process. We've had over the years, we've had a whole bunch of campaigns with mixed results, to be honest with you. and we're reinvigorating our efforts on LinkedIn through a variety of techniques. I have a friend who has developed some great tools to assist you in building and maintaining and enriching those LinkedIn connections. and I'm using some of those tools now to help me assist me in in building those relationships. So I think that's really the primary. You know, we've tried email. email is a numbers game. You know, you can probably send out literally a thousand emails. You might get a couple responses. I'm just as I'm sure you are overwhelmed with email every day from people that I know and a lot of people that I don't know that I'd rather not know. but but you know, I spend more time deleting emails than I do responding to them. And and so email is is

You know, it's it's just not a very effective technique. social media other than LinkedIn can work also, I think, but you have to have the right audience. you know, our target audience is probably people that are in their thirties, forties, fifties who are responsible for sales organizations. It usually takes that long in your life before you become a a sales leader. And and you know, they're Typically not social media active. they may participate and they our experience is they do participate in LinkedIn. But as far as Facebook and Instagram and TikTok and all the others that are out there, they don't seem to be living there and and more importantly, making decisions based on that. So our primary focus is on LinkedIn, and we're hoping that that pays off. We're also spending a lot of time with our current customers. And that is that's paying off big time, not only with them, but also asking them for referrals, people that they know that maybe in a similar situation as them, and looking at how we can help those folks out with a warm introduction.

Yeah, no, I appreciate that. Well, I'm doing some of that already. but I definitely can do more. So I appreciate the tip. Thank you.

Well, I think the overall theme is listen. my partner Ron says a good salesperson is a good listener, a great salesperson is a great listener. And I think we spend way too much time in a sales in the sales process trying to convince people that what we have for them is the right thing instead of listening. And and so to me listening is the absolute key to any conversation. whether it's talking to your spouse or your children or a prospect or a church member or whatever, if you are asking questions and listening, you are going to go a long way to having phenomenal communication. And so that to me is the key. you've got to you've got to listen, you've got to absorb that information. And then you've got to react to it in a way that's appropriate for that situation. So that's that's my key point for the day.

Well, you can go to our website at www.tracksellinginstitute.com. we also have a new website, www.trackselling trackcoach.com, which is our new product that we're introducing. or you can send me an email at mike.thomas at tracksellinginstitute.com. any of those will work and I'll be happy to respond as quickly as I possibly can.

Thank you very much. It's been a pleasure.