Motivational Seminars - Do they Translate into Increased Sales?

An old real estate friend of mine once attended, at the request of his broker, a listing presentation. After the speaker had gone through all of his theatricals, humorous anecdotes and a generous helping of buzz words, he encourage members of the audience to sign up for a full day seminar with the emphasis on listing.

My friend said he was amazed at the enthusiasm it created. Dozens of people were pushing and shoving to get to the front with their check books at the ready. As all these people were licensed real estate agents he figured they obviously knew how to knock on a door and deliver a short feature benefit statement, so why were they so anxious to get rid of their cash.

Fred, my friend, was a champion at listing. His secret was to go out in the morning and stay out into the evening knocking on doors. He didn't see anything very complicated about this, it simply took a lot of hard work and perseverance. His office colleagues envied his ability to keep chalking up listings on the board but they never wanted to put that much effort in themselves.

It seems that seminars serve two purposes. First it gets the salesperson off the road for a few hours or a few days and secondly the participants hope that they will receive some inside information that will allow them to make money without having to work so hard.

I spent some time training high tech sales representatives and during that period I suffered through countless motivational tapes and the occasional live speaker. At times I had a good laugh at some of the amusing anecdotes but I never felt that I'd gained anything that would make a huge difference to my life. Even some of the more euphoric salespeople, who came out of the sessions with a great big WOW! rarely changed the way they conducted their business.

I recently spoke to a salesman who swore to me that a well known motivational speaker had changed his life with one particular phrase. However, this man is struggling to make a meager living and he's moving from company to company hoping to find an easy way of making a buck. Seems to me that what ever phrase that was - he should forget it before he goes broke.

Salesmanship hasn't really changed that much since someone tried to sell Pharaoh some outrageously priced vinyl siding for the Pyramids. My old friend Fred used to say that all a salesperson needed was a paper and pencil to write down the orders.

Today of course we've added cell phones, laptops and CRM systems to help salespeople to do their jobs but they still have to make the calls, they still have to build that client relationship and above all remain focused. You can add all those new phrases like active listening, buying facilitation, consultative selling, quantitative evaluation and inter-functional collaboration to your vocabulary, but are your sales figures increasing as a result?

Ben Feldman, who worked for New York Life in the eighties made one million dollars a year in commissions. How did he do it? He worked hard and he worked smart. Can anybody do what he did? Yes - but you've got make up your mind that you're going to do it and never waiver.

I don't personally believe that listening to a motivational speaker will do very much for the average salesperson. For someone to address a hundred or so people with the same message is like a doctor treating all his patients for a sinus infection regardless of their symptoms. I'm convinced that it's better for a salesperson to interact with a motivator on a one on one basis and for areas of concern to be dealt with in detail and without distraction.

Companies have got to examine their own motives for hiring, what I call, light entertainers, and celebrities who know beans about business. There's one famous sport figure on the speaking circuit, who's mother is also on the circuit talking about her son. Soon we'll be seeing Babe Ruth's great grandchildren inspiring us with tales of how he was placed in an orphanage at age seven and was regarded as an unruly student. But, in spite of these set backs, he managed to claw his way up to play major league baseball at the tender age of 19.

The Babe was a great player but he never sold a life insurance policy, a piece of computer software or vinyl siding and salespeople don't play major league baseball - they provide solutions to their client's needs and have a very different way of looking at the world.