In many organizations, there's a long-lived disconnect between sales reps and the training they receive. Companies often overlook advanced concepts like how to create an ROI model or how to reach the right customers at the right time during the sales cycle. Instead, some organizations continue to focus on the basics, like making eye contact and the importance of a handshake.

For example, a1to1Media reader emailed that she recently attended an all-day session with 500 sales professionals. She said that the bulk of the morning meeting focused on the importance of paying off personal debt. The afternoon session also offered little value, with the trainer discussing the importance of handing out business cards (he made no mention of leveraging social media to reach prospects), and wrapped up with making the attendees practice strong handshakes.

Sales training needs to extend beyond the handshake and incorporate more collaborative enterprise strategy as well as management accountability. To ensure training is relevant at his organization, Patrick Feit, senior vice president of sales and corporate marketing at Young America, introduced a new strategic sales training approach to his sales team this past February. The new strategy formalizes the selling process by taking a cross-organizational  approach to conducting strategic solution development around channel engagement.