Time to invest in sales training

I've lived in Malaysia for 12 years. During that time, although Malaysians are more talented than they give themselves credit for, I've noticed how bad they are at selling. I know why. When you are an Asian tiger, and MNC's are begging you to take their FDI dollars, there is little incentive to develop sales skills. Alas, like all good things, that era is over. We're now entering the era of AFTA, WTO, globalisation, FTA's and so on. Now, more than ever, the corporate playing field is as level as it will probably ever be. If you can't sell, you are not going to survive.
I see this transformation day in day out. In the retail sector Malaysia is striving to market itself as a shopping haven and yet whilst retail sector sales are good, they could be so much better if sales staff were taught to sell. But this will never happen till business owners begin to change their attitude to sales staff. Essentially, they need to stop seeing sales training as a cost and looking at it as an investment. Sales staff are key to increasing sales. Sales reps are not just about folding clothes, putting them in a bag, taking money and operating a cash register. And yet, i would suspect, and i will try to confirm this over the coming months, that retail owners probably spend more time and money training staff to use a cash register than they do teaching them how to put more money in the thing!
Training is key to the success of a sales driven industry. If want to be able to sit here in 12 years time, and say that Malaysia has grown as much as it has over the past 12 years, then there have got to be significant investments in sales training.