It's true: everyone is a salesperson!

And in my organization, which is fairly small, everyone has to be a good salesperson. We have few field sales folks, so we really rely on our inside sales team, practice leaders and account people to participate actively in the sales process.

But how do you ensure that everyone in an organization -whether a skilled salesperson or not - knows how to identify, work and close a sale, especially a complex, solution-oriented sale? Train them.

So, I'm off to school. For most of next week, I'll be behind closed doors attending a sales training program designed to help everyone involved in the sales process contribute at a higher level. I've spent approx. eight hours between this week and last prepping for the course (thanks to a pretty rigorous e-learning class) and feel fairly confident that I grasp the major principles of the approach.

Solution Selling is hard. What struck me most during the e-learning course is the amount of preparation and work that goes into a solution sell. Typically these are large, complex sales that require input and buy-in from many people at varying levels within an organization; a salesperson must be proficient, if not fluent, in the language of each buyer and/or contributor. Selling is a difficult skill to learn, much less master.

What is marketing's role in all of this? I'm looking forward to the classbecause I believe it will help me and my team become better marketers. I expect we'll walk away with more and better ways to support our sales team and have a much better understanding of how "complex sale" buyers buy, which will inform future marketing programs.

Have you taken a Solution Selling course before? Any thoughts or suggestions? I have a very hard time sitting still for a long period of time, so I expect three days of training will be a challenge, but otherwise I expect to learn a great deal.

I'll let you know what I think when I get back.