Sales training has been around for a year or two; in fact, well over two thousand years! For instance, just consider the sales training advice inherent in just two Biblical stories; the Parable of the Sower and the Parable of the Fig Tree. For, in essence, here is the distilled wisdom that experienced sales people often have to learn the hard way.

The messages in these two stories still find their way into most sales and marketing training programs even if they are not called sales training tips from Mark. All selling is based on arithmetic because there is a relationship between the number of approaches and the number of sales.

This is an historical fact going right back to Biblical times. However, if you're skeptical, dig out the family Bible and read "The Parable of the Sower" - you'll unearth it in the Gospels, the one according to Mark, and it's a great illustration of some fundamental sales training.

Visualize the picture 2000 years back - a primitive existence where seed was scattered from a basket by hand. Inevitably, some fell on a path and was eaten by birds; some fell on stony ground and was blown away; some fell among weeds and choked as it grew; but some seed fell into good soil where it grew and bore much fruit, yielding 30%, 60% and even 100%...pretty much a classic description of calls/sales ratio straight from an up-to-date sales training manual.

To put it in sales and marketing training parlance, there is nothing new or magical about finding prospects - it's hard graft but, remember, reaping always comes after sowing; as epitomised in this lesson.

The "Parable of the Fig Tree" suggests you look hard at the sales person who is not performing and, like the fig tree in the Biblical parable, cultivate, nurture, develop and train. However, if eventually after much cultivation and tender loving care, there is no fruit - then regrettably the decision has to be made to chop it down and plant another tree. Yet another priceless lesson in the basic sales training tips from Mark.

2000 years later there are many and more sophisticated ways of "sowing" but the principle, hammered home consistenly by sales training companies, remains the same. The more prospects you contact, the more times you tell your story, the more chance you have of converting a suspect into a prospect and a prospect into a customer. And, if you do it often enough, the law of averages dictates you will find enough customers based on the number of approaches made.

It certainly entails rigorous sales development training with self-discipline day after day and week after week. Nevertheless "results" are the name of this particular game and, in the early days, you'll make up in numbers what you lack in skill. Over time, by sales training, study and application the sales skill factor increases and so does the conversion rate.

The facts are inviolable, nevertheless, some long-time sales people find some difficulty in accepting them. Why?

Because, as an exceptionally wise man once observed - Selling is Simple; not Easy, but Simple - and that, of course, means consistent training in sales closing techniques, telephone sales training preceded by a well-planned prospecting activity.

Knowing what to do is the simple part of the equation - doing it, day after day, even though it's easy, requires perseverance from a special kind of person...a man or woman who is willing to acknowledge self-discipline and assimilate the essentials embodied in sales training.