Are you unsure about whether you should include sales experience as a prerequisite in the advertisement for sales trainer jobs in your company? Don’t worry, many HR professionals share the dilemma.
In my opinion, sales people can be preferred for any job role. Our entire professional and personal life is a series of sales pitches. Right from getting dad’s permission to attend a party to getting a salary raise, we are expected to sell. Similarly training is also a long sales pitch. A trainer has to sell an idea, or a process or a skill to people. Sales experience helps in development of transferable knowledge, skills and attributes which can easily be modified to train.
In a study conducted, employers were asked to name their expectations from job candidates. You won’t be surprised to know that the top spot in the employer wish list went to ” Being work ready”. Hence they rated experience higher than the knowledge or degrees. A work ready sales trainer can only be one who has already experienced both sales and training. In fact there are better chances that a good sales person will make a good trainer than the other way round.
A few days back I read an article about “When will HR get a seat at the table?” The author Gurprriet Siingh discusses the lack of respect for HR functions everywhere and whether they deserve a rightful place in the board. The conclusion he put forth really made sense to me. He proposed a 5 year stint in operations for every HR personnel. This may sound like a radical idea or the author’s version of corporate Conscription, but it will work wonders. So why not a sales stint for sales trainers too! Even if they don’t become star sales people overnight, the experience will definitely improve their performance as a trainer.
Everybody wants a trainer who speaks the language of the trainees. Experience in sales also exposes the person to the ground realities and road blocks. Who better to talk about selling than a person who has been there done that! Also a sales person understands the pain points and internal conflicts of various functions better. This gives him/her an edge over a run of the mill trainer. Apart from that, the perceived image and credibility of the trainer is better.
Unless your trainer can talk from experience, the training will be like an adrenaline pumping pep talk, which dies down after a few hours. All that is left is fluff without any real nourishment. So think it through before choosing candidates for sales trainer jobs in your company.
You are absolutely spot on. Years ago, while doing product training for a high tech company, I was conducting a training class for experienced sales folks. I had a pretty technical background at the time but had not been in a quota carrying sales role. One senior rep in the class responded to one of my canned marketing lines, “how do you know? You have never sold to real customers in the field!” This felt like a dagger stabbing me right in the heart. Why? Because although I knew the material, I had led a team of 5 instructors on a very successful field training event across 9 cities, I knew he was RIGHT. So, I took a job in the field as a sales executive to gain experience in direct and channel sales. I told my wife we would move to FL and I’d sell for 3 to 5 years and then I’d be a better trainer. Well, I loved selling so much, I sold and managed sales teams for 21 years. Then I returned to HQ (for a different company) and ran the Global Sales Training organization. We revolutionized new hire sales training and channel partner training. It was the sales experience to led to the training success. My total experience: Sales – 21 years. Sales Training and Sales Training Management – 12 years.
So I cannot agree with you more. Sales experience brings enormous value and credibility to the sales trainer. With this credibility, the trainer can have a tremendous effect on developing and realizing real sales performance improvement for field sales teams.
Thanks for a great, insightful article. Best wishes to you.
Rick Mathieu
Thanks for your wishes. Even I learned the hard way when one of my Retail Sales Training bombed. Wish more trainers saw it your way