By Chris Hondl, Nexstar Network Sales Coach
Before I got into sales, I was a teacher. I taught for five years at the elementary level. My wife was also a teacher. At the time, we were newly married, with no kids, and looking ahead to how we were going to afford kids, buy a house, and put together all the other pieces that come along with the American Dream.
Unfortunately, our two little teacher paychecks didn’t add up to making that happen. So, I took a stab at getting a second job. I had seen advertisements for the Minnesota School of Bartending and I decided to enroll, with hopes of teaching by day and bartending on nights and weekends. I went through the program and achieved the lifetime certification, which proved I had mastered how to make more than 100 of the most popular cocktails and knew about all the top brand-name liquors.
That was almost two decades ago, and I have yet to make a single drink as an official and employed bartender. In fact, if you were to ask me for any of those 100+ drinks I am “certified” to make, the only one I think I would be able to make you would be one of the simplest: a rum and coke.
You see, I never adopted my newfound bartending skills into practice. I learned the skills, but I never used what I learned afterward.
We see the same thing in our own businesses, don’t we? We send an employee to a session, and they gain all of these new skills and ideas, and then what? They come back to work. And if we don’t actively apply what your employees learned in the field, it’s eventually as if the session never happened. What a waste of time and money!
Recently, I asked the 40+ previous attendees of the Sales Objection Bootcamp about the effectiveness of the bootcamp.
The results I got back from the attendees, four months after the session occurred, generally fall into three buckets:
- We haven’t done a thing with the information we learned at the Sales Objection Bootcamp since we left, and we’re seeing the same results we were getting before the training.
- We realized we have some process issues to fix before we continue with what we learned in the Sales Objection Bootcamp.
- We are following the plan we learned and seeing amazing results!
These answers aren’t in the least bit surprising. It’s just like me and my experience with bartending school. Had I attended the school and then immediately gone out and begun bartending, the skills I had learned at school would have become second nature and helped me realize my goal of making money as a bartender. But since I never practiced what I learned, I ended up in the same place I was in before I attended bartending school: with no results, not retaining what I had learned, and not making money as a bartender.
Participating in the bootcamp is only half of the journey. Putting what you learn into practice is the other, more important half.
There are a lot of sales-focused training courses out there for our industry. Take time to identify the right one for you and your team. For example, the Sales Objection Bootcamp we’ve developed here at Nexstar is an intensive three-day session where your dedicated sales coach comes to your location and works with your team to master their presentations and objections such as: Price, Spouse, Shopping Around and many more.
Want proof that it all works? Here’s feedback from a member who is following the plan and currently seeing incredible results:
Nathan Andreas, owner of , attended Sales Objection Bootcamp with his sales team. Since returning home and practicing what they learned, their closing rate has gone well above their budgeted goal, with one salesperson averaging 69% closing on tech leads and 55% closing on marketed leads. Nathan says the take-aways that have been key to their success are:
- Buying into having a strong sales process before presentation
- Maximizing skills-practice
- Clarifying the objection
- Digging deeper to uncover the real objection
- Using a trial close prior to asking for the sale
- Riding along with his team
So! Are you ready to dramatically increase your sales in FY25? It will take commitment and follow-through. Otherwise, would you prefer to keep getting the same results you’ve always gotten?
Chris Hondl serves as one of two Sales Coaches at Nexstar Network and has more than 15 years of experience in coaching, training, and sales. If you are a Nexstar member and are prepared to implement what you’ve learned in the Sales Objection Bootcamp, contact your Sales Coach for an assist. If you’re not a Nexstar member, but you’re curious to learn more, click here.
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