Interview: Sales Myths It's Time to Bust

By Shani Moshe

Date: November 24, 2014

Izhak Peled, CEO of Talnir, a company that trains and develops salespeople, will speak at a sales force management conference on December 15 about preparing employees for sales roles. Peled, considered Israel's leading sales coach, brings more than 35 years of knowledge and experience to the table, which gives him an up-close familiarity with every shade and side of the profession.

He started out selling door to door while studying for a bachelor's degree in behavioral sciences. Later he set up his own company, which provided sales services to companies and businesses. After that he spent about ten years as VP of Marketing and Sales at a high-tech manufacturing plant in Haifa's Scientific Industries Center. After all those years of breathing sales from every angle, he founded Talnir in 1991.

Izhak, what kinds of organizations come to you for consulting?

Izhak Peled: "Organizations come to us from every field and sector, and for all sorts of reasons. Sometimes it happens when they're setting up a sales team, hiring new salespeople, or refreshing an existing team after a change of sales manager, training manager, HR manager or CEO. We also get organizations that feel their results are slipping, say because a new competitor has entered the market and they want to take it on, or something along those lines. At the same time, we also work with large, well-organized companies like banks, which have structured, ongoing training programs and open 14 or 15 sales courses every year."

Can a company that hires "sales hotshots" basically skip training them?

"Not at all. Quite the opposite. Hiring a group of sales candidates and throwing them into the field without training is, as far as I'm concerned, practically abuse. Most of them will underperform, lose interest and quit, or the company will end up replacing them. But training isn't just for new teams. Sales is an endless, dynamic field, one I'm still learning to this day, so you can take any sales team, however seasoned, experienced and successful, and move it a long way forward. Everyone always has a great deal to learn and refine."

What are the most common problems in sales organizations today?

"A lot of organizations simply have no real feel for sales. Even now, in the 21st century, they'll say things that just aren't true, like 'salespeople are born, not made,' or 'the product sells itself,' or 'the salesperson is a minor factor.' That's a distorted way of looking at things, and it's behind quite a few of the problems.

"Another common problem is picking the wrong people for the team, which hurts the company's results. Sometimes it comes from the sales manager running the team poorly. Compensation in this world is also very, very complex, and many people don't understand it well enough. These are just examples. You could point to plenty of other things that weaken sales organizations."

Why is it so hard to recruit salespeople?

"Because the percentage of people whose personality suits this profession is very, very small. It takes a rare combination of traits that pull against each other: empathy and ego drive, in a very particular 'dose.' And when a candidate with the knowledge, experience and special skills finally does show up, he expects unrealistic terms. On top of that, quite a few organizations have flawed screening processes. Without enough knowledge about the personality profile required and the methods for assessing it, they often end up hiring exactly the wrong people, who of course struggle to fit in and succeed."

Is believing in the product a must for succeeding in sales?

"People may find this unsettling, but the answer is no. Believing in your product is a huge privilege. You can see it in the spark in a salesperson's eyes, and it helps him succeed. But for a professional, it's definitely not a must or a condition for success. Someone who makes his living from sales, whose own livelihood and his organization's survival depend on it, has to be able to sell his products with the same enthusiasm and persistence even if he knows that a few feet away there's a company offering a better, cheaper, more attractive solution.

"For example, say a man wants to sell his car. The gearbox is falling apart, the car has a lot of miles on it... and he's asking full book price. A neighbor on the next street is selling the same model with a quarter of the mileage, in far better shape. If the seller is an amateur, just knowing about that other car will bother him, and when the buyer asks whether the car is basically okay, he may blurt out: 'Look, I'm not saying it's the best car on the block, but...' If he's a professional who makes his living from sales, knowing about the better alternative shouldn't show up in any way at all."

What's the difference between a salesperson's job in the '80s and '90s and today?

"There's no difference at all in sales techniques. The only change is technology. A sales situation is still an interaction between people. The seller is always a human being, and in most cases so is the buyer... The basic principle of that interaction keeps repeating itself, with the necessary adjustments, and neither that basic principle nor the whole world of 'handling objections' has changed in any meaningful way over the past 30 years.

"Technology has changed over the years, and you can see it in quite a few parts of the sales world. For instance, the internet and relevant online forums let customers research the product, prices, alternatives, service and so on ahead of time. Customers can also look up alternatives in real time and lean on them while negotiating with the seller. None of this changes the ground rules of the basic interaction, which has always rested on well-known principles from the behavioral sciences.

"The objections customers raise haven't changed over the years either. There are five known types of objections, and customers repeat them again and again, in wording and styles that depend, among other things, on culture and personality."

What will your talk at the conference be about?

"At the conference I'll focus on the hardest task of all: training salespeople. The field is crammed with outdated, distorted assumptions like 'everyone sells their own way,' or 'sales isn't something you can learn: either you've got it or you don't'... and so on. Veteran salespeople are sometimes convinced they 'have nothing to learn'... And among the younger ones you'll find people whose entire knowledge and experience in the field amounts to having once sold a used car, and they're sure they already know it all... Getting their cooperation right at the start of the process is the first condition for success.

"In a talk packed with eye-opening examples from the field, I'll lay out the complexity involved in training salespeople, the common mistakes, and especially the sophisticated multi-stage process designed to change how learners think and behave, along with the tools that make sure the change lasts over time."