Apprenticeship VS Boiler Room - Which is Better for our Profession?

I am of the personal opinion that the Sales profession is more similar to a trade, like being an Electrician, Plumber, Cobbler, or Mechanic, than professions like Engineering, Accounting, and Marketing where the knowledge required is far more linear in nature, and where facts rather than experience often drive success.


My rationale behind this is that Sales is generally something that requires hard learned experience and time spent actually getting wins and making mistakes, rather than learning about an "ideal system" and just implementing that.


I think our profession could benefit from taking the approach of apprenticeship for our less experienced cohorts, helping cultivate better sales expertise and knowledge earlier and earlier in the career, rather than making it a dog-eat-dog world where you get left out in the cold until you figure it out.


Not that Apprenticeship is easy - There is certainly hard and shitty work to be done to learn the basics from the ground up. But I fundamentally disagree with the 'churn and burn' shops that so many of us have worked at or heard about over our careers.


In the long term, if we all pay it forward and invest in creating better sales professionals, that improves all of our job prospects and earnings, and has a chance to start redeeming the reputation of Sales as a profession.


I'm sure there's some heated opinions on this and I'm curious about yours. Do we need more apprenticeship to help build better reps? Or do we just toss them in the Boiler Room and the 1 that survives out of 50 gets a chance at the table?


Walk with me? Or just Fuck or Walk?


Commence discussion!

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I'm a fan of the boiler room approach.

Sales is one of the toughest jobs out there. It's not for the thin skinned, sensitive, or people who need a lot of coddling and gentle language to help them through difficult times. This is why most sales people fail and the remainder of us get paid well for our efforts.ย 

I'm not saying chuck someone with no experience into a room and hand them a phone with no training or management because that's going to be a waste of the employee and the employer's time. Yes, a successful sales team needs a dialed in training process, mentors to be available for the new employee to talk to, and a learning curve needs to be expected from the employer's end.

But I also don't agree that someone should be getting weeks of training before they even touch the phone. And I think organizations are doing employees a disservice when the person clearly does not have what it takes to do well in sales but keeps them in the position anyway, hoping they'll learn one day.
CaneWolf
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Call me what you want, just sign the damn contract
alecabral
Arsonist
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Director - Digital Sales Transformation
A mix of both perhaps? Sometimes the best approach is right in the middle lane.
Blackwargreymon
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MDR
Following the traditional definition of apprenticeship, I think this is a false choice.
Clashingsoulsspell
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ISR
But I also don't agree that someone should be getting weeks of training before they even touch the phone. And I think organizations are doing employees a disservice when the person clearly does not have what it takes to do well in sales but keeps them in the position anyway, hoping they'll learn one day.
JustGonnaSendIt
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Burn Towns, Get Money
100%

I think a week of training on company / customer stories / role-play, then get out there and get started.

Start them with something with a higher success rate to build their confidence, such as following up on conference leads. Something luke-warm.

Then transition to real cold outreach when they've had some time to get over the phone scaries.
CaneWolf
Politicker
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Call me what you want, just sign the damn contract
Following the traditional definition of apprenticeship, I think this is a false choice. A lot of us start as SDRs/BDRs. Some companies (Oracle, Adobe are examples) treat those roles more strategically.

I agree that having BDRs pick up the phone and dial 100 times a day without thinking is useless for teaching them anything.

But having them work with reps, handle the inbound leads, cold call lists that are based on some criteria, schedule meetings at conferences - that kind of stuff works for development. If that's what you mean with apprenticeship then yeah, I agree. Otherwise, I think that's the ideal.
JustGonnaSendIt
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Burn Towns, Get Money
I do mean apprenticeship in the way you described as development.ย 

Essentially helping guide someone down the path while still making it their responsibility to do the work and learn from it.
Error32
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ISR
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