Has sales leadership become a lost art? I hear all the rhetoric about how marketing has replaced selling, and that consumers are now much more educated and informed as a result of the Internet. But have consumers become more sophisticated out of necessity because so many companies they do business with have poorly trained sales staffs?

I know I am biased on this subject. I was blessed to have received nine months (yes you read that correctly) of intense sales training at AT&T’s National Sales School, and received a world class training experience. At that time, there were a number of companies who had similar outstanding sales training programs including IBM, Xerox and Proctor & Gamble to mention a few. And all of these companies were also recognized as the market leaders in their respective industries. Is there a direct correlation here? Continue reading…