In 2012 I spent 90% of my time making cold calls. 

Today salespeople spend 90% of their time tinkering with sales tools.

The problem isn't the tools, but how early in a salesperson's development they're being pushed to learn and use them.

Sales training and development needs to happen in stages but much of the industry has lost complete sight of this. 

Instead of bombarding new-hires with learning a 13 tool tech stack and attempting to master 40 different daily tasks... teach things in phases.

Here's how sales should actually be taught and learned...

1. Start by cold calling SMB businesses for 30-90 days without any other tasks or distractions. Just pick up the phone and become an expert by doing the same thing 100 times each day.

2. Then mix email into the process, by writing manual emails directly from Gmail, with no automation or template. This is the only way to ace this art.

3. Once they've mastered these skills manually, it's time to introduce tools that can simplify and automate aspects of that process.

4. If you're using LinkedIn and social selling, bake that into the process over time so reps are learning, practicing, and mastering one craft at a time.

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Don't start with tools and sprinkle in the fundamentals. 

Start with the fundamentals and sprinkle in the tools. 

This is the only right way.

Not every company has an SMB market they can cold call, but you can essentially fabricate one for purposes of training.

Even if it requires calling on non prospects to learn and master the motions...

That said, if you're selling enterprise-only then you probably want to recruit people who have already mastered these skills. 

The intention is to maximize "at bats" for each skill, by isolating the time spent learning it so the rep can perform more of that task in a condensed period of time with no distractions. 

There's a reason school is divided into grades and each grade is a prerequisite for the next. Sales training and development should be no different.

Happy Selling,