Confucius observed, “He who learns but does not think, is lost! He who thinks but does not learn is in great danger.”
Learning and thinking are fundamentally linked. They need to be.
Let me state a working assumption, that is, people who choose to work in sales have been through a selection process to identify competencies and the individual has a realistic understanding of the sales role, responsibilities, and challenges.
When starting a sales career, sales training plays a critical role. Development usually focuses on three key areas, technique, process, and product. Layered over these are marketing components that address networking, prospecting and promotion. Together they form the technical components of sales training. Once mastered, they only improve with practice and repetition.
Arguably, the technical learning described in the preceding paragraph is not difficult. Product knowledge may be the exception as product can be complex. The topics have been studied and presented over many years. They have evolved and adapted but there have been few changes to the fundamental concepts of selling. Perhaps the last major change was...