A few weeks ago Tom Friedman editorialized on whether the Iraqis learned anything from the US during the past 6 years.

That got me thinking about all the investment made in “sales training” in this country and worldwide ($7.2 billion estimated last year in the US alone). “…more than 1/2 the firms report investing $1500-7500 annually per sales rep…only one quarter of reps consistently use their company’s accepted methodology more than 1/2 the time, only 10% resolutely (greater than 90% of the time).

Friedman’s point is the Iraqis know who they have been, but they still haven’t figured out whom they want to become as a country, and that the current crop of Iraqi leaders right now isn’t doing much to overcome this.

Similarly I wonder whether sales/company execs really have learned anything from their rather significant investment. One study estimates only a dismal 2% bump in effectiveness. If so the management view could case closed don’t spend the $ ever again.

However just like the Iraqis, are there bigger unresolved issues which even after significant investment still need to be addressed?

In Iraq questions of how will power be shared, how will the awakening councils be absorbed into the government, how will rewards (wealth/power) from results (oil revenues) be split – all require agreement or compromise in order to move forward.

In selling focused organizations executives face a different set of issues, but no less of an imperative to reach agreement. How will the sales process be adopted? What level of sponsorship will be evidenced? What level of execution will be required? How will cross-functional stake holders be integrated? What is the impact on existing systems/strategies? What metrics will be used to guage success or failure? How will salespeople be recognized when help is needed AND what coaching/reinforcement will be provided?

All of these questions and many more need to be addressed by sales execs and companies or the result will likely be similar to Iraq – “the different ethnic communities still won’t want to compromise much either”.

Buying sales training alone is not enough for oranizations to improve results – much more thought, decisions, and commitments need to go into the formula to achieve success, in order to move the needle and impact real ROI/business results.

Just like Admiral Mullen recently told the Iraqi leaders “the US is not going to solve Iraq’s problems, that is the job of a sovereign nation…the coalition forces will leave soon” – sales development is a full time commitment for every organization, sales training & development firms can be resources but alone are not responsible for sales organization learning or the learning of executives either.

If your organization has invested or will invest sales training, what have you learned? For many companies it seems just like Iraq there still is a long way to go. Time to get to work.