Roughly 18 months ago I did my every-two-years rethink of what I'm doing with myself, where I reevaluate every single aspect of my life except Cindy. (She's the only constant star in my sky.) This usually happens the last two weeks of the year, because the two holidays always create a blip in business normalcy. (Note: I didn't say it's because nobody buys in late December -- an excuse many salespeople use to justify their ineptness. It's not that people don't buy in December, it's that their buying -- and many business -- patterns change. So as long as sales are good, it's a convenient time to forget daily business for a while and focus on the really big picture instead.)
An outcome of my last rethink was to make the strategic decision to stop selling sales training for two very important reasons:
- Repeating the exact same sales training over and over and over and over and over and over and over ... bores me at least as much as my saying "over and over" that many times bores you. (I tried to say it only enough to make the point -- sorry if I went "over.")
- I had a revelation that I would never be able to teach every person on the planet how to sell if I charged for sales training, because not every person could afford it.
Some of you may remember my announcements about the free sales training.
First, I was going to give it to everyone who ever served in the U.S. military.
Then I was going to give it away in St. Louis -- holding a once-per-month workshop for everyone in the area who wanted to take it.
And I looked for a partner with whom I could create an on-line version of the Honest Selling Masters Course -- someone who specializes in putting other people's training on-line and who would create the training for free and help me give it away to the world, and do so for one reason only -- because it's the right thing to do.
And I offered the three-day masters course free to any business, anywhere in the English speaking world, provided they'd cover my travel expenses and open the room up to other people in their city who might want it.
When I announced this to the world, at least 200 of you replied with comments including statements like:
"This is great, but you aren't going to have time to earn a living."
"How can you possibly afford to give away all that expertise for free?"
"You never cease to amaze me, Gill. I can't wait to see how this works."
It didn't.
I've spent the last 18 months telling everyone that I would never again charge for sales training, because I wanted to share the ideas with as many people as possible. And in that 18 months I have trained ZERO people.
At most, I had six inquiries into the training. Every one of them was a single individual from different areas of the country. Each was wondering when I could come to his or her city so they could sit in. None were either willing or able to find a local company to sponsor the training (meaning pay my expenses, supply the venue and open their doors to others).
This week, Richard Demko joined the Honest Selling team. He's going to be selling for my company and providing sales consulting services to information technology companies who manage their clients' computers and servers (he's highly experienced and brilliant at selling managed services).
Combine Rick's desire to sell the Masters Course with the fact that I've trained fewer people -- zero -- by giving the training away for free, and you get a total reversal of the statement "I will never charge for sales training again."
For all the right reasons, training the world Honest Selling for free is one of the best ideas I've ever had.
To bad the idea sucked.
Gill E. Wagner, Sage of Selling
President of Honest Selling
Founder of the Yellow-Tie International Business Development Association
