Sales Training for CEOs and Business Owners

Guest Post by Dave Barnhart, Founder, Business Blogging Pros

This is my story of becoming an enthusiastic fan of Michael D Goodman and his methodologies for sales training.

In 2004 I was one of two partners running a small branch of a larger company charged with taking an in-house software application to market and turning it into a commercial product.  As a cash-strapped enterprise, our business plan called for my partner and I to perform the role of salesman (as well as programmer, chief cook, and bottle-washer). Later – as we began to generate revenue – we would hire a sales guy.

A man’s gotta know his limitations.  I knew mine:

• I was not a salesman
• I was terrified of cold-calling
• While I was adept at using the interview process to separate the good programmers from the BS artists, I knew I could not do that when interviewing people foe a sales position.
• I did not have the skills and knowledge to manage sales people (I knew this from doing it – and failing – in a previous life)

My partner was introduced to Michael D Goodman and she brought him in.  Meeting Michael D Goodman was one of the best things that’s ever happened to me professionally.

I want to share with you my mindset: I was skeptical. Most of my previous experience with consultants was bad.  The mentors I respected held a low opinion of consultants.  And Sales?  I once worked for a guy who as Sales Manager said, “A salesman won’t read anything that doesn’t have ‘Commission Plan’ printed on the cover”.  The number of sales people I had known who could actually sell could be counted on the fingers of one hand and have a few fingers left over.  So to say that I had low expectations was an understatement.

In a couple of dozen hours spread over a few weeks, Michael D Goodman changed how I approached the entire topic.  We worked through a session of ‘What I Sell vs What they Buy’.  Suddenly the lightbulb went on and since that day when faced with offering a new product or service I have used this exercise to help me talk about it in terms that resonate with the client.

He taught me how to effectively cold call – me!  a guy who was terrified of it but bound and determined to overcome that fear.  He knew what metrics to record and coached me through creating a script and taught me the true objecting of that initial cold call. With a few hours of patient coaching I got pretty good at it.

He introduced me to screening tools that can detect character traits in an applicant for a sales position that can tell you if the guy has problems that will keep him from performing.  Suddenly I had a tool that would do a much better job that I of separating a good salesman from a BS artist.

The pièce de résistance was when he introduced me to something he called the Pain-Power-Fit Model, and his tool for judging if a sale was ready to close.  And if the sale was not ready to close it told you what needed to be done.  Have you ever managed a salesman that was an eternal optimist? A sales guy who was ready to spend the commission check after the first cold call?  Now I had a tool that I could use to examine each of those sales with a critical eye.  No more ‘fairy tale forecasts’.

Since then I’ve continued to spend time with Michael.  I’ve watched him use his methodology repeatedly to teach people how to effectively build a mid-level pipeline in 90 days.  More importantly, I’ve watched him teach CEOs and business owners how to hire and manage sales staff, and how to equip a sales guy with what he needs to be successful.