Here’s a company that seems to really understand the sales: game: http://www.irwinpollackconsulting.com. They are also willing to put their money where their mouths are because they have bid the top billing on google PPC for “sales and marketing“. A few words of wisdom from their site: “The reality is, your customer will buy from you for one reason and one reason only:  for their own best interests!”  Here are Irwin’s favorite sales training lessons:”Focus on activity.  Activity leads to sales.  Monitoring and measuring activity trends can ultimately help maintain and improve sales results when the information is accurate.  A sales pipeline report – which shows what your salespeople have brewing in the “prospects” category – and a regular review of it can be helpful in monitoring activity and forecasting realistic results.Like great athletes, it is not the number of shots you miss that counts, it is the number of shots you make the counts.  In baseball, even the best hitters make outs twice as often as they get hits.  Babe Ruth and Henry Aaron stuck out more than probably 90 percent of today’s players.  No one cares how many times Secretariat or even Seabiscuit lost a race.”Good stuff although most is focused on sales and not marketing. Nonetheless, many a sales team could take away a few good lessons from these guys.