by Bob O’Haus, Sr. Manager of Curriculum Design, Ricoh

Salespeople love to share stories about their experiences and the things they’ve learned as they’ve grown in their jobs.  This kind of activity has become almost a requirement to be considered a professional sales rep.

In fact, many sales reps who attend formal sales training programs comment on how experienced instructors drive home important learning points by relating them to stories that everyone in the room will encounter.  As a professional sales instructor, people really do want to know what stories you know.

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by Michael Leimbach, Ph.D., Wilson Learning

As a sales leader, you probably debrief sales calls, review sales campaigns, analyze prospecting activity, and ride along on certain customer calls to observe or assist. No doubt you have noticed that each salesperson has some customers and prospects that they easily connect with, and others that they don’t.  And you might have seen cases where the same approach that succeeded with one prospect or customer caused another to become impatient and tense.  Perhaps certain salespeople appear to waste time on social chit chat or having coffee with a customer– and yet they seem to succeed in closing good business.  And some established customer relationships end up being downright difficult – fraught with tension and frequent communications issues and misunderstandings for reasons that are hard to understand.

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Whether they are called Generation Y, Echo Boomers or Millennials, the group of workers born in the 80’s and 90’s has some unique characteristics. This is the group that handled communications, media, technology and social networking right from the cradle. They are often the bane of traditional organizations due to the technology challenges they bring, but with the right understanding, they can be great salespeople for today’s business world because of their natural approach to their jobs, their customers and their active use of training programs.

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