你的销售力是否过时了?

This white paper is going to explain some things about the nature of learning and behavior, and why those things matter desperately to salespeople and the companies that employ them. To put the discussion in context, let’s start with a true story.

这份白皮书将解释一些关于学习和行为的本质，以及为什么这些事情对销售人员和雇用他们的公司非常重要。为了将讨论置于上下文中，让我们从一个真实的故事开始。

Call it X Corp. You would recognize its real name. It is a highly respected, multi-billion-dollar company with more than 1,400 business-to-business salespeople worldwide.

避免泄漏真名，我们这里称它为X公司。它是一家备受尊敬、价值数十亿美元的公司，在全球范围内拥有1400多名B2B的销售人员。

On paper, X Corp is a model organization. It has ambitious but realistic goals for continuous growth. It has carefully laid plans to achieve those goals. It has a sophisticated reporting structure and appropriate management systems for a company of its size. It has an effective incentive-based compensation plan for salespeople and sales managers. It has a respected brand and a great marketing operation. Its salespeople thoroughly understand their industry and the technologies that they sell.

理论上，X公司是一个典型组织。它具有雄心勃勃且现实的持续增长目标。它精心设计了实现这些目标的计划。对于一家规模庞大的公司来说，它有一个复杂的报告结构和合适的管理系统。它有针对销售人员和销售经理的有效的激励计划。它有受人尊敬的品牌和强大的市场运作能力。它的销售人员完全了解他们的行业和他们的销售技术。

X Corp had all the right stuff …except for one thing. It lacked a modern selling process that would foster continuous growth in the skills of its salespeople.

X公司拥有所有做的对的东西。。。除了一件事情。它缺乏推动销售人员技能持续增长的现代销售流程。

X Corp sent its sales reps to various training programs from time to time, and they picked up some useful techniques. But there was no systematic process–no unifying framework–that allowed the salespeople to adapt to changing conditions, build upon and refine their skills, and keep getting better at their jobs.

X公司曾多次派出销售代表参加各种..项目，他们获得了一些有用的技术。但是没有一个系统化的过程 - 没有统一的框架 - 让销售人员适应不断变化的条件，加强和提炼自己的技能，并不断完善自己的工作。

They grew just so far, and then they hit a plateau–or slid slowly into obsolescence. Those who had been on the job for 15 years didn’t really have 15 years of experience; they had the same year of experience 15 times.

他们的成长非常缓慢，然后达到了一个稳定的状态，或者慢慢地逐渐退化。那些在职15年的人并没有15年的经验，他们只是经历同样的经历15次。

Symptoms of the Problem?

Salespeople were in constant “react” mode when working with customers. When competitors offered lower prices, X Corp’s salespeople saw no option except to match the cut-rate prices, thereby sacrificing margins. They spent their time dealing with trivial problems that kept them from selling new accounts and growing existing ones. They wandered from client to client with no productive objectives for their calls–no “Commitment Objectives” for client agreements that would move the sales process forward. They simply responded to whatever came up that day. Their routes had turned into ruts.

销售人员在与客户打交道时总是处于“反应”模式。当竞争对手提供更低的价格时，X公司的销售人员除了降价到和竞争对手一样的价格，别无选择，因此牺牲了利润率。他们把时间花在处理一些琐碎的问题上，这些问题既不能使他们获得新客户，也不增加现有客户的业务。他们从客户端到客户端，没有实现他们的“承诺目标”——没有客户协议的“承诺目标”去推动销售进程。他们只是回应当时发生的事情。他们的路线已经变成了固有的轨迹。

These were mostly experienced, veteran salespeople, but they were unproductive and stagnant. Management began to see them not as vital contributors but almost as a necessary evil. The marketing team couldn’t understand why program after program failed to ignite the sales force and drive the ideas that marketing worked so hard to create and communicate. Indeed, due to the disconnect with sales, the marketing budget produced no tangible ROI at all.

这些人大多是经验丰富的老练的销售人员，但他们的工作效率低下、停滞不前。管理层开始认为他们不再重要甚至认为他们几乎是一种不好的影响力。..团队无法理解为什么项目未能激发销售力量，推动..工作就如此困难。事实上，由于与销售的脱节，..预算根本没有产生任何有形的投资回报率。