Good sales people continue to be in demand.

It seems a week doesn’t go by without somebody calling me looking for a sales person. Sales has always been a position everyone thinks they can do and yet few can do well. What is even more amazing is how too many employers, especially those in search of a good sales person want to pay their sales people at the low-end of compensation and on top of that do not want to invest their development. It blows me away when I run into these situations and they’re far more prevalent than you would imagine.

What really made this hit home with me is a survey I saw which was conducted by Manpower, the employment organization. They surveyed 32,000 employers in 23 countries and the number one position they had trouble filling….sales rep. Wow, now that’s proof beyond anything else I’ve ever seen about the struggles of finding good sales people. What is amazing is how the issue of finding sales reps was higher than what would be perceived as far more technical positions such as engineers, accountants or technicians. Now add to this equation that the competition is not going to go away and the struggle to find quality employees is only going to get tougher. All this means we need to focus even more on the development of sales people and not just entry level training but serious on-going development. When I mention this to employers it’s amazing how some of them will remark how they don’t want to invest in something that can quit on them at anytime. If this is the belief system held by an employer then there are far bigger issues. Any employer who is not willing to invest in a person’s development on-going especially in a field such as sales is an employer not worth working for.

Let’s not think the only person responsible for developing the skills of a sales person is the employer, it’s also the responsibility of the person themselves to continue growing. Here’s where another argument comes up and that is the argument of how sales people do not believe they’re paid what they’re worth and therefore why should they invest in themselves since the company isn’t paying them enough to begin with. If this is the attitude of the sales person then we have a sales person who will never be better than average at best and more importantly a person with this type of attitude will never become a high-performer. Every time I meet with a high-performing sales person it becomes very clear that they have reached this level because they have not just relied on their company to supply training but they have also made an investment into the development.

The question that has to be asked is what is the right level of on-going development a sales person needs to perform at a high level. Unfortunately there is no uniform answer as the solution lies not in the level of time or money spent developing somebody but on the continuous results the sales person is achieving. Here the key is to not assume self-development does not need to occur as long the person is achieving their goals. Just because a person is achieving their goals does not mean they don’t need training. I’ll take the position the best time to train is when things are going good since the person will be more relaxed and open to ideas “vs” being in a panic mode of trying to find short-term solutions. In the end the answer as to how much on-going development is needed for sales people must be answered by the sales person and their employer. However I would be safe to say there is probably less than 5% of all sales people who are receiving the correct amount of training on-going.