[AndyYSCISOdept]

KTK I think you raise an interesting point. One of my biggest questions is, "When an old dog comes in that is unwilling to learn new tricks, who is responsible for their being unqualified"? Do we lay the blame at the feet of those that trained them before that did it in the "wrong way" or do we blame the hire for being unwilling and or unable to adapt to a new set of principles?

[jotucker1983]

Let me ask you guys some questions.

When you reference "training", what type of training are you talking about? Are you talking about Professional Competency? Professional Competency would include knowing everything there is to know about the product, the competing products to it, the challenges/issues it resolves for XYZ market sectors, what type of merchant it fits well for, sister products to your product (i.e. factoring), and understanding the industry from a Macro (regulatory bodies and trends) and Micro perspective (funder underwriting processes and criteria).

Is this the "training" that you guys are referring to? When I usually hear Sales Managers (or people that are close to Sales Managers) talk about "training", it's always more along the lines of something within the Professional Competency area.

But what about "training" in relation to the production of a high quantity and high quality stream of new qualified leads on a daily basis? Do you train them to do that? Because that's 95% of the position, Professional Competency is the other 5% of it. You can take a guy that's less competent, but with a high quantity network of quality leads coming in, and he will always out sell the more competent guy with a lower quantity of quality leads.

Drizzle said that a "good salesperson" can have success randomly calling a phone book, I fundamentally disagree with that. It's this mentality that a "good salesperson" can function in a bad territory, with a bad product, with bad leads, and with outdated data, if they just have a certain level of high professional competency. Thus, Sales Managers focus their "training" only on certain aspects of Professional Competency (mainly, the features/benefits of the product) and say nothing about secondary market research, strategic partnerships, marketing budgets, etc., you know, the 95% of what will make a rep succeed or fail lol.