Author: Todd McBroom

I have worked with forklift dealerships for over thirty years. Sold the equipment, managed the teams, owned the dealership. And I see the same five mistakes everywhere I go. Not because the people are bad — because the industry has bad habits that nobody questions.

Here are the five biggest ones — and what to do about them.

1. Leading with Price

When the first thing out of your salesperson’s mouth is the price — or worse, a discount — you have trained them to compete on cost. And you will never win a price war. There is always someone cheaper. The question is not “what does it cost?” The question is “what is it worth?”

Teach your team to sell total cost of ownership. Uptime. Service response. Parts availability. The relationship. When a customer understands the true cost of buying cheap — downtime, lost productivity, expensive repairs — price becomes a secondary conversation.

2. Hiring Experience Instead of Coachability

Dealers love to hire salespeople with “industry experience.” But industry experience often means industry habits — and not all habits are good. A hungry, coachable person with no forklift experience will outperform a seasoned rep who “already knows how to sell” within six months. Every time.

Product knowledge can be taught. Work ethic and willingness to learn cannot.

3. Ignoring the After-Sale

Most dealerships celebrate when the deal closes. Then they move on to the next prospect. But the sale is not the end — it is the beginning. The customer who just bought five forklifts needs parts, service, operator training, and eventually a fleet replacement. If your salesperson disappears after the delivery, someone else will be there when the customer is ready to buy again.

The best salespeople treat every closed deal as the start of the next one.

4. No Consistent Sales Process

Ask five salespeople at the same dealership how they handle a new lead. You will get five completely different answers. That is not a sales team — that is five individuals doing their own thing. Without a consistent process — from first contact through close and follow-up — you cannot coach, you cannot measure, and you cannot improve.

A repeatable process does not mean a rigid script. It means everyone knows the steps, the standards, and the expectations. Freedom within a framework.

5. Training Once and Forgetting

You would not send a technician to one training class and expect them to service every new model for the next ten years. So why do you do that with salespeople? Selling evolves. Customers change. Technology changes. AI is reshaping how buyers research and compare equipment right now.

Ongoing training is not an expense. It is insurance against irrelevance.

Fix These and Watch What Happens

I have seen dealerships transform their numbers by fixing just one or two of these. Fix all five and you are not just competing — you are dominating your market.

If any of these hit close to home, let us have a conversation. I will tell you exactly where I see the opportunity and how to capture it. No fluff, no generic advice — just thirty years of real-world forklift sales experience applied to your team.

You have a sales team of five people. One charges into every meeting like they are running the show. Another spends thirty minutes building rapport before they ever mention the product. A third pulls out a spreadsheet before the customer finishes their first sentence. And someone else lights up the room but cannot seem to close.

None of them are wrong. They are just different birds.

What Is the DOPE Bird Personality Model?

The DOPE model is a personality framework that maps to four bird types — Dove, Owl, Peacock, and Eagle. It is rooted in the same behavioral science as DISC and Myers-Briggs, but it is simpler, more memorable, and far more practical for sales teams.

Each bird represents a dominant communication and decision-making style:

Eagle — Direct, decisive, results-driven. Eagles want the bottom line. They make fast decisions and expect you to keep up. In sales, they are your closers — but they can bulldoze relationships if they are not careful.

Peacock — Energetic, persuasive, relationship-focused. Peacocks sell with enthusiasm and charisma. They are great at opening doors but sometimes struggle with follow-through and details.

Dove — Patient, loyal, team-oriented. Doves build deep trust over time. They are the salespeople customers call back because they feel heard. But they can be too passive in competitive situations.

Owl — Analytical, precise, data-driven. Owls know every spec, every comparison, every detail. They win on expertise. But they can overwhelm buyers with information when a simple answer would close the deal.

Why This Matters for Sales Teams

Here is the insight that changes everything: your salespeople are not just one bird. And neither are your customers.

When an Eagle salesperson meets a Dove buyer, the Eagle’s aggressive pace makes the Dove retreat. When an Owl salesperson meets a Peacock buyer, the Owl’s data dump makes the Peacock’s eyes glaze over. These mismatches cost deals every single day — and nobody realizes it because it looks like the customer “just was not interested.”

The real breakthrough is teaching your team to read the buyer’s bird in the first five minutes — and adjust. An Eagle salesperson who can slow down for a Dove. A Peacock who can bring data for an Owl. That is where the magic happens.

How to Use the Bird Model in Your Organization

Step 1: Know your own bird. Take the What’s Your Bird? personality test to understand your own dominant style. Most people are a blend of two types, with one leading.

Step 2: Have your whole team take it. When everyone on the team knows their bird — and each other’s — communication improves immediately. The Eagle manager understands why the Dove salesperson needs time to process. The Peacock learns to appreciate the Owl’s thoroughness.

Step 3: Learn to read customers. This is where the model becomes a competitive weapon. Train your team to identify buyer styles from verbal and behavioral cues, then adapt their pitch accordingly. I cover this in depth in my sales training workshops.

Take the Test

Want to find out your bird? Take the free What’s Your Bird? personality test — it takes about five minutes and you will get your full Bird profile emailed to you immediately. Then share it with your team and watch the conversations change.

Every sales team in America is asking the same question right now: “Should we be using AI?” The answer is yes. But not the way most people think.

AI is not going to replace good salespeople. But salespeople who use AI are going to replace those who do not. The trick is knowing where AI helps and where it hurts — because if you let it take over the wrong parts of your sales process, you will lose the one thing that actually closes deals: the human connection.

Where AI Makes Salespeople Better

Research and Prospecting

Before AI, preparing for a sales call meant twenty minutes on Google, LinkedIn, and the company website. Now you can feed AI a prospect’s company name and get a detailed briefing in sixty seconds — their recent news, industry challenges, competitors, and potential pain points. That is not cheating. That is preparation. And the salesperson who walks in better prepared wins.

Follow-Up and Communication

Most salespeople lose deals not because they cannot close, but because they do not follow up fast enough — or at all. AI can draft follow-up emails, create proposal summaries, and even suggest the right time to reach back out based on patterns. It turns a two-hour task into a ten-minute task. That means more time in front of customers and less time behind a keyboard.

Data and Reporting

AI can analyze your CRM data and surface insights that would take a human hours to find. Which customers are due for a fleet replacement? Which deals have stalled and why? Which product lines are trending up? This is where AI shines — making sense of data so your team can make better decisions faster.

Where AI Will Kill Your Sales

The Conversation

If your customer can tell they are reading an AI-generated email, you have already lost. The moment a buyer feels like they are being “processed” instead of listened to, trust evaporates. AI should never write your first impression. It can help you prepare for it, but the words that come out of your mouth — or your keyboard — in a real conversation need to be yours.

Objection Handling

When a customer says “your price is too high,” they are not looking for a scripted response. They are looking for a real human to understand their concern and respond with empathy, insight, and confidence. AI cannot read a room. It cannot feel the tension when a deal is about to slip. It cannot look someone in the eye and say, “Here is why we are worth it.” That is where great salespeople earn their keep.

Relationship Building

People buy from people they trust. Trust is built in handshakes, in showing up when there is a problem, in remembering that their kid plays baseball. AI cannot build a relationship. It can help you maintain one — reminding you of birthdays, tracking communication history — but the relationship itself has to be real.

The Right Balance

The salespeople who will dominate the next decade are the ones who use AI for the 80% of their job that is preparation, administration, and analysis — and bring 100% human energy to the 20% that matters most: the conversation, the relationship, and the close.

That is exactly what I teach in my sales training programs. Not how to replace your salespeople with AI. How to make your salespeople unstoppable with it.

Want to train your team on AI-powered selling? Let us talk.

Your company spent good money bringing in a sales trainer. Everybody sat in a conference room for a day, took some notes, and went back to doing exactly what they were doing before. Sound familiar?

Material handling sales training fails for the same reason most corporate training fails: it treats selling like a lecture instead of a skill. And skills do not develop from sitting in chairs. They develop from practice, feedback, and repetition.

The Three Reasons Sales Training Does Not Stick

1. It Is Too Generic

Most sales training programs are built for insurance companies, software firms, or car dealerships. Then someone slaps your logo on the cover and calls it “customized.” But selling a $50,000 forklift to a warehouse manager who has run the same operation for twenty years is nothing like selling a SaaS subscription. Your industry has its own language, its own objections, its own buying cycle. Generic training ignores all of it.

2. It Is All Theory, No Practice

Death by PowerPoint is not training. It is a nap with slides. Effective training puts people in the situation — live role plays, real-world objection handling, scenarios pulled from deals they actually lost. If your sales team is not uncomfortable at some point during training, they are not learning anything new.

3. There Is No Follow-Through

A one-day training event is a starting point, not a solution. Without reinforcement — follow-up coaching, accountability, tools they can use on Monday morning — everything learned on Friday is forgotten by Wednesday. The best training programs build in checkpoints and refreshers so the skills become habits.

What Actually Works in Material Handling Sales Training

I have trained sales teams at forklift dealerships across North America, and here is what I have seen work every single time:

Industry-specific content. Your salespeople need training built by someone who has sold forklifts, managed a dealership, and understands the material handling business from the inside. Not a motivational speaker who Googled your industry the night before.

Interactive delivery. My sessions are not lectures. They are live, high-energy, interactive workshops where every person in the room participates. Nobody hides in the back row.

Personality-driven selling. Understanding buyer personalities through frameworks like the DOPE Bird model gives your team a practical edge. When a salesperson can read whether they are talking to an Eagle, Peacock, Dove, or Owl, they adapt their approach in real time — and close more deals because of it.

AI integration. The teams that are winning right now are using AI tools for research, prospecting, and follow-up while keeping the human connection in the conversation. I teach salespeople how to use AI in the sales process without losing the personal touch — because the personal touch is what closes.

The Bottom Line

If your last sales training did not change how your team sells, the training was the problem — not your team. The right training, delivered by someone who has actually done the work, will move the needle. The wrong training is just an expensive day off.

Let us talk about what your team needs. I will give you a straight answer about whether I can help — no sales pitch, just a conversation.

Most forklift dealers hire experienced salespeople and assume they already know how to sell. And technically, they do — they know how to quote specs, run demos, and follow up. But knowing the product and knowing how to sell it are two completely different skills.

After 30 years in material handling — selling equipment, running dealerships, owning one, and now training sales teams across North America — I can tell you the number one reason forklift sales teams underperform: nobody trained them how to sell. They were trained on what to sell.

The Real Problem with Forklift Sales Training

Walk into any forklift dealership and ask the sales team what makes their product different. You will hear specs. Lift capacity. Mast height. Battery life. Warranty terms. Every one of those answers is something the customer can find on a spec sheet — or ask AI to compare for them in thirty seconds.

That is the problem. When your salespeople lead with specs, they are competing on information. And information is free. The only thing that is not free is the relationship, the trust, and the insight a great salesperson brings to the table.

What Effective Forklift Sales Training Actually Looks Like

Effective sales training for forklift dealers is not another PowerPoint marathon. Your team has sat through enough of those. Real training changes behavior. Here is what that means in practice:

1. Teach Them to Sell the Why, Not the What

Every customer who calls you already knows they need a forklift. What they do not know is why they should buy it from you. Your sales team needs to be able to answer that question in a way that has nothing to do with price or specs. It has everything to do with what happens after the sale — uptime, service response, the relationship they are buying into.

2. Read the Person, Not Just the Need

Different buyers make decisions differently. Some want the bottom line immediately. Others need to talk it through. Some want every data point. Others care most about how the decision affects their team. If your salesperson pitches the same way to every buyer, they are leaving deals on the table. Understanding personality styles — like the DOPE Bird personality model — gives your team a practical framework for reading buyers and adapting in real time.

3. Use AI as a Tool, Not a Crutch

AI is changing how buyers research equipment. Your customers are using ChatGPT to compare forklifts before they ever call you. Smart sales teams learn to use AI for research, follow-up, and proposal prep — while keeping the human connection that actually closes deals. The future of forklift sales is not AI replacing salespeople. It is salespeople who use AI outperforming those who do not.

4. Practice, Not Theory

The best sales training is interactive. Role plays. Live scenarios. Real objections from real customers. I have trained teams where the salespeople told me afterward, “That was the first training I have ever been to where I did not check my phone once.” That is the bar. If your training does not hold attention, it does not change behavior.

The Cost of Not Training Your Sales Team

Here is what most dealers do not calculate: the cost of a mediocre salesperson is not just lost deals. It is lost customers. A customer who has a bad buying experience does not come back for parts, service, or their next fleet replacement. One untrained salesperson can cost a dealership hundreds of thousands of dollars in lifetime customer value.

Conversely, a well-trained salesperson does not just close more — they close better. Higher margins. Stronger relationships. Repeat business. Referrals.

Ready to Train Your Team the Right Way?

I have spent three decades in this industry — not behind a podium, but on the floor, in the field, running dealerships, and closing deals. My training is built on what actually works in material handling sales, not generic sales theory from someone who has never driven a forklift onto a truck.

Request a training consultation and let us talk about what your team needs. No pitch. Just a conversation about where your salespeople are today and where they could be.

Ask most reps how to sell forklifts and they’ll start listing specs: lift height, capacity, tier-4 engines, financing terms. That’s not selling. That’s reciting a brochure the buyer could read themselves.

After 30+ years in material handling, as a rep, a manager, a dealership owner, and now on the OEM side. Here’s what I’ve learned: people don’t buy forklifts. They buy uptime, safety, a solved problem, and the confidence that they made the right call. Learn to sell that, and price stops being the conversation.

Here are seven shifts that separate the reps who hit quota from the ones who wait for the phone to ring.

1. Lead with why, not specs

It’s not a sales problem. It’s a clarity problem. Before you pitch a single feature, get clear on why this buyer is even looking. A breakdown? An expansion? A safety incident? The “why” behind the purchase tells you which features actually matter, and lets you skip the twenty that don’t.

2. Diagnose before you prescribe

No good doctor prescribes before the exam. Ask about their operation, their pain, their people, their timeline. Most reps talk 80% of the meeting. Flip it. The rep who asks the best questions, not the one who knows the most specs, wins the deal.

3. Sell to the person, not the purchase order

People Knowledge > Product Knowledge. Without the people, the product is useless. Every buyer is weighing risk, budget, ego, and the fear of looking wrong in front of their boss. Read the human across the desk and you’ll close deals your product-obsessed competitors never see coming.

4. Kill hesitation early

The most expensive thing in sales is hesitation. A stalled deal rarely dies from a real objection, it dies from an unspoken one. When you feel the buyer pull back, name it: “What’s giving you pause?” Surfacing the doubt is how you dissolve it before it becomes a “let me think about it.”

5. Make the buyer’s why bigger than their no

Your why has to be bigger than your no. Objections shrink when the reason to move forward is vivid. Keep the cost of not deciding (downtime, safety risk, lost throughput) as real to them as the price on the quote.

6. Use AI to prepare, not to replace the human

Use AI to research the account, model financing, and prep sharper questions, then close the laptop and be fully present in the room. The goal is using AI in the sales process without losing the personal touch that actually closes deals.

7. Ask for the decision

Rejection is a direction, not a destination. Too many reps end strong meetings with “I’ll follow up.” Ask for the next commitment every time. A clear no today is worth more than a maybe you chase for six weeks.

The bottom line

Knowing how to sell forklifts isn’t about memorizing more product, your reps already know the equipment. It’s about understanding the human making the decision. That’s exactly what The Power of Why forklift sales training teaches, live with your team, led by Todd McBroom.

Want your team selling on value instead of discounting to win? Request training →