What do you think of the salesmen you meet when you buy for the business or as a private individual? I predict that overall you are distinctly unimpressed, but every now and again, say 1 in 10, you come up against a real expert, a standout operator. He finds out about every bit of available business, he doesn't offer a discount until you ask, he doesn't cave in on objections, he knows about your business sector and he listens. If you as buyer are getting only 10% good, chances are your customers are too when you're selling. Not a happy thought but what an opportunity!

All the best salesmen I've ever met had a number of things in common: pleasant personality, good listening skills, determination, excellent personal organisation. But more than that, they had all at some stage undergone a very good training programme, one which had given them absolute confidence in their ability to produce results. They knew deep in their hearts that what they had learned to do, they could do and that it would succeed. In effect, they were believers.

If all your sales team had that level of confidence, your sales would jump. Investing in sales training is therefore, on the face of it, an obvious way to improve a business, because the correlation between action and results is clear. Which is where we hit the buffers. There are many thousands of options and they can't all be good. What's more, even the good ones can't all be right for your business or your sales people.

This is also like other investments: you only find out if you made the right choice after the event, which is a pretty duff deal. Sadly, sales trainers will tell you that a fair chunk of their business comes from putting right other people's failures. Great. Those are the key reasons why so many businesses don't make the investment in the first place. But it's still the right decision, so how do you go about it?

First resource to explore is Train to Gain, which covers the whole country, being a government body (www.traintogain.gov.uk). They have Skills Brokers who will give you a free on-site assessment of training needs and subsequent recommendations of training providers. This has the advantage of independent experts who are not financially benefited by their proposals and whose organisation has undertaken appropriate quality checks. The Skills Brokers adopt a holistic approach ie they review all your training needs, rather than just addressing an area such as sales which you have highlighted. This is no bad thing, since it's possible to be too close to the problem and to have an overview of what's available for the whole business is valuable. The Skills Broker's service is free and the initial meeting takes about an hour to an hour and a half of your time.

You could also look at Training and Coaching Today, a supplement of Personnel Today, the leading trade magazine in the sector. Their website offers open access to existing articles on sales training which, naturally, is a topic they cover on a regular basis.

When you look at training providers you find that there are lots of different approaches. Each of them has an ethos - and you should be clear that it is one you agree with. Some focus on a highly structured approach; others address the psychology of the individual. You'll be buying from persuasive sales people so be sure you understand and like what they are proposing. You are also responsible for ensuring that they have as good a brief as possible of the problems and opportunities you face. The old computer phrase ‘rubbish in, rubbish out' applies to training as well.

Courses vary in structure. There's the ready to go package with a fixed agenda where you have people from different businesses training together. Then there's the tailored version which is a standard structure adapted to fit an industry. Thirdly you have a completely bespoke format for an individual company. You should be clear which you want.

So what are the opportunities or weaknesses which prompt businesses to buy sales training? MTD Sales Training say the two big issues highlighted are dealing with objections and closing. Phoenix Training agree that the ‘bad at closing' line is quoted most often. The three shortcomings which Advance see most commonly are a failure to highlight need, failure to get commitment and a lack of qualifying of the opportunity. Reed Learning list all the above and many others but highlight two interconnected sins: not listening and talking too much, without saying anything to a purpose. Quadrant Learning Services say that, if they could change two things in European sales practise, they would be to encourage more questioning and more listening. Tack operate an annual survey of buyers: 70% of them say that salespeople's assessing skills are either fair or poor; they also cite a salesperson's questioning and listening skills and knowledge of the customer's business as the key determinant of who to buy from more often than any other factor. If none of the above is ringing bells, good luck to you.

For what it's worth, my own personal bugbears are two: lousy preparation and presumption. In a 21st century web based world, not to know something about a business before you arrive is unforgivable. Presumption is worse: the salesman knows what you want and proceeds to sell it to you. This is about more than asking questions and reacting to the answers, it's about a mental attitude - that the customer is just fodder for this month's sales target.

Interestingly, trainers agree that the specific weaknesses which businesses recognise in themselves are often not the core problem. Take dealing with objections and closing. The problem is at the front not the back because salesmen don't address the right issues and haven't asked enough questions.

Sean McPheat MD of MTD Training says that in a recession businesses go into "thrive mode or survive mode". A training budget is sitting waiting for the axe, but success is achieved when people are motivated, which training delivers. They also succeed because their competitors aren't trained, aren't motivated. The winners are those who give themselves the best shot. Note too that a business which has had to make some redundancies really needs to re-motivate the rest of the staff. How better than to invest in them?

What makes for a successful course? MTD stress that the people going on it should give input up front to make it relevant and to avoid the folded arms brigade. The course leader has to have kudos with the trainees, for instance a successful career in a company noted for sales success. A course must be practical, enabling delegates to see how selling is done. Follow-up after the course is important as is post-course support - enabling people to ask: "where did I go wrong here?"

Bill Osmond of Phoenix Training says a small group, typically 6-8 people, is essential. Any more and you lose the interaction that is vital. It should be a mix of listening and practise - you've got to learn how to get it wrong before you get it right. Currently, a back to basics approach is proving very popular. Relevance is essential (some courses include daft role play elements that put delegates backs up). Involvement is key; Osmond says: "Delegates should be working as hard as the trainer."

Miles Bentley director of Advance says that success is not just about teaching sales skills. First you have to understand the pattern of a sale. Advance teach people to map a sale, define the sequence and break it down into its various elements. Bentley says that if you don't understand that structure, you won't know why you won or lost - and most people don't. Bentley says defining and qualifying need is key to the process - learning to ask those difficult why questions. Advance run the first strategic sales programme accredited by a UK university, Leeds Metropolitan, which is an interesting and encouraging development, because sales needs to be part of the educational mainstream.

Hugh Greenway of Reed Learning says the key is to change behaviour in the required way. Hence: define and put numbers (however simple) on what represents success because you can't treat a problem without defining it; define just why the hell anyone should buy your product or service "if you can't get it into a sentence, you don't know the answer"; involve management in the programme; the secret doesn't lie in some clever acronym, it's about what people actually do afterwards; follow through to ensure new behaviour continues.

Tack say a good course includes a pre-course questionnaire so each delegate's needs are addressed; lots of interactive practical sessions and role play plus group discussion to share experience; practical guides and tools to take away that can be used immediately; planning of how to implement change after the course; post course briefing to ensure learning is implemented; a point of contact for delegates to talk through implementation after the course.

Quadrant Learning Services stress the importance of preparation - the delegate should be told why he's training and what outcome is expected. Ken Crompton of Quadrant recommends customers should ask providers the following: what's the balance between lecture, group work and role play; who's the actual trainer(s) (you must meet them); how will they measure success; what's included in the price (follow-up? course materials? pre-course planning?). Crompton also says you should be looking for relevant case studies to be used and for the trainer to shadow salesmen before the training event.

So what do you get out of it? This million-dollar question should be asked of any training provider. What you don't want is just a nice warm feeling in all the delegates' guts as they drive home. What you do want is return on investment (ROI). The majority of providers will concede that it's difficult, verging on impossible, to predict that. However Reed quote Taylormade adidas golf who said "year to date sales are up more than 100% and this is attributable in no small way to the training we received" Nevertheless, everyone should have some track record examples of proven results which they can feed you and certainly clients who will give you insight of personal experience.

Finally comes cost. Personally, I have always felt that the cost of sales training looks to be at the ‘how much??' end of the scale. But I suspect I was misled. Put together a tailored programme and you are looking at something in the order of £2000 per day for 8 -10 delegates and the programme will last two days. As you'd guess, this is a guideline figure, but in any case managers who buy training on price are mugging themselves. Delegates going on one-day packaged courses will cost roughly £500. A personal viewpoint is to get the potential trainees to do plenty of the research themselves: if they will benefit from sales training, let them define what and how - and do some of the find-out. They may well know people in other companies who have had good or bad experience.

Where we talk about cost, we come back to return on investment. If a given cost on marketing generates 100 enquiries and you close 10 of them, you would be far better off spending half as much to generate 50 and close 10. Cut these notional figures how you like, the message remains obvious. It's the base proposition of investing in training and it's right.

Paul Clapham is a marketing consultant with over 25 years' experience covering a broad range of business sectors and a full spread of marketing disciplines. He works with small, medium and large companies alike to increase their profitability through marketing. Tel:01453 765432

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