Karl Goldfield contacted me the other day. illumio flagged one of his posts, so I read it.
In this post, Karl goes on a rant about technology and sales training. Here is my favorite part of his (unedited) challenge to sales trainers:
If you are not tweeting your blog posts and sending newsletters to keep your mind trust strong in the frontal lobe of your prospects and customers; if you are not joining groups and connecting on Linked In or E-cademy, Facebook or Plaxo; if you are not using Jigsaw or Salesconx to find your the top level prospects; if you do not set up google alerts and research news aggregators for trigger events; if you do not use Genius or Leadlander, then Landslide or another Process driven tool to manage your lead cultivation, what on earth are you doing? I don’t mean to get on a rant here (Thank you Dennis), but it is 2008 and if you are not using VOIP and SAAS, or this whole paragraph is in a new language, get off the soap box and go back to the classroom. It is time to learn a new game, then teach others. Go, now, get moving!
I love it! Karl is absolutely right. Sales trainers who procrastinate, waiting for their clients to drag them into the Sales 2.0 era are going to lose any competitive edge they might currently have. Sales trainers need to understand, embrace, and integrate sales-enablement and learning technologies into their IP (intellectual property) and the delivery of their IP.
I’ve been blogging here and on my blog about the new relationship between technology and sales effectiveness. I speak with sales trainers every day. Too many tell me that they don’t get involved with technology for any number of reasons. Most of them aren’t explanations, they’re excuses.
Sales trainers: Do you want to be considered a leader by your clients and the sales training industry? Join the companies that are already there. Prove, with auditable performance metrics, that your approach, process, tools, content, etc., either integrating with, or leveraging, relevant Sales 2.0/Web 2.0 technology, enables your clients to achieve their sales performance goals and objectives, whether that be more sales, higher contract values, shorter selling cycles, or all three.
If you’re already there and ESR has not recognized you for that accomplishment, let me know.