Many sales training courses are good for when times are bad and even better when times are good. When unemployment is rife a good sales person may make a job for himself by selling. When times are good it will be easier to sell and then some sales people will do really well putting on fat that may carry them through lean periods.

In a famous television series the issue of sales training is depicted in an interesting and amusing light. Two characters are portrayed in a number of well crafted episodes. David, the boss, is a very bad at his job and Tim is as good as David is bad.

It soon becomes apparent David, who is the boss, is an atrocious salesman because he cannot listen. Tim, on the other hand, does listen and is an excellent salesman despite the fact that he is distracted by the pretty receptionist most of the time. In one memorable telephone conversation he gives an excellent demonstration of how to close a sale crisply.

Viewers might be led to believe after watching the series that people are either born to sell, or not, as the case may be. This is to miss the point of education. In every profession there are people with more or less natural ability. The aim of education is to stimulate growth in particular directions, encouraging useful tendencies and discouraging others.

The top salesmen in the world will probably be the ones most amenable to taking instruction because they will probably be good listeners. They will also understand that the more one knows the more there is to know. Like living, selling is a dynamic process that involves eternal adaptability to changing circumstances. Every situation is unique and though a process might always have the same phases, ending in either a close or termination, there are slight variations at every turn.

In the course of office life people are moved around. They may start a new job, be promoted or demoted. A person may be moved from field sales to administration or become a business development manager after having been in another role. This constant shifting of roles contributes to the need for in-service training and refreshment. New roles require subtly different approaches and workers need to constantly appraise their own performances. This is why ongoing training is vital in healthy organizations.

In fact, good refresher courses provide opportunities for morale boosting if they are well run. They should be fun, so that people learn together how to align their different talents in identifying and meeting the needs of clients. A company will certainly do better if its sales corps is working in unison with other role players such as accounts managers and business development managers.

Many fine skills can be learnt or polished by participation in sales training courses. In addition to learning listening skills there are other techniques that can help to identify a prospects needs and bring him to the point of closing without being too overt in the process. Probably there is no one magic list of what one needs to know but a really good trainer will identify those strengths and weaknesses in the persona of each trainee that need attention.