Jeffrey Gitomer is one of the most sought-after sales trainers in America – and one of the most opinionated, unusual and results-oriented. He is also a bestselling author, a keynote speaker, and the founder of Training One.

Here are some of the views that Jeffrey expressed when he talked with Cordell Riley in one of Tortal Training’s Breakthrough Ideas in Training in July, 2015.

Opinion: “More Sales?” Is the Only Metric to Measure after Sales Training

Jeffrey believes it is. He also thinks that measuring customer satisfaction is useless, because many customers who claim to be dissatisfied continue to buy anyway. Even customers who post negative reviews online keep on buying, he states. So why measure customer satisfaction at all, or use it as a metric to determine how well sales training is working?

Example: Airlines get lots of negative reviews, but people don’t stop flying. So airlines only need to ask, “Are we selling more tickets?”

To learn more about this opinion, check out Jeffrey’s book, “Customer Satisfaction is Worthless, Customer Loyalty is Priceless.”

Opinion: People Don’t Want to Be Sold . . . They Want to Buy

“When people go to shop for a car, they don’t say, `I hope somebody sells me a car,’” Jeffrey told Cordell. “But they do want to buy a car.”

He therefore believes that sales training should teach salespeople to uncover the reasons people are shopping, and to sell to them. If a clothing salesperson can find out that a shopper is looking for a dress to wear to her mother’s birthday party, for example, the salesperson can say, “This dress is going to look and feel great at that party, and here is why . . .”

Jeffrey believes that training that only teaches salespeople to describe products misses this point entirely.

Opinion: Face-to-Face Training Sessions Produce the Most Meaningful Results

Jeffrey points out that since the recession, many companies have wanted to save training dollars by migrating all of their training online. Yet he believes that live training “events” are needed to bring about lasting and measurable change, because only face-to-face training can improve people’s attitudes. “Why are there no attitude courses in any corporations?” Jeffrey asked Cordell. “It’s because nobody understands attitude and they train on their products instead.”