Sales Training and Banks. Why not?

While in Brisbane this week, I met with an old friend that leads up a division of a major bank.

“How’s business?” I asked.

“Tough,” he replied. “We're being asked to sell, sell, sell Mike,” he quipped. 

So I asked how that was going.

“Not well,” he replied. “Nobody knows how to do it and we’ve had no training!”

He has since approached corporate HQ in Sydney and been told ‘No budget’ for training in sales.

To use an AFL football analogy, it’s like asking the Brisbane Lions to run out, Round 1 in the 2012 season with absolutely no preparation, coaching or development. Chances of winning – Zero!

Why is it these large corporate goliaths from the relative safety of corporate HQ and their mechanical spreadsheets, still refuse to acknowledge that ‘skills’, like selling, are not innate in humans? Especially bankers!

Boiler