Experts Informing Experts

Robert Hammond

Equal attention is placed on the transmitter and receiver roles in even the earliest conceptual models for communication. And yet, the primary emphasis of sales training is on who will deliver the training, what will be trained, how to deliver the training, when to train, and where the training will be delivered. Often absent in sales training is a focus on why the salesperson will adopt the training. A key dynamic in the training environment are the multiple levels of expert status that exist within and between business and academic informing activities as well as in both the informer and receiver roles.

It is common in sales training efforts to have a sales manager or third party expert (consultant) conduct sales training. This paper summarizes findings of a practitioner – scholar with over 30 years of industry experience conducting a workshop for sales managers at a different company (name disguised as FinanceCo in the paper) and in a different industry. While the practitioner – scholar is an expert, the sales managers who are receiving the training are experts within their domain of knowledge. This dynamic challenges the conventional mindset of a trainer being the expert and the receiver being a novice. The dynamic is then generalized to the broader community of informing actions.

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