Dave Stein's Blog: An Independent Perspective on Sales Training and Sales Effectiveness

In the previous post, I took you through some of the 2011 highlights in the sales training industry.

I promised to share with you who ESR considers sales training industry leaders.

A few points to consider:

• As you are probably aware, ESR’s Research Methodology enables our research team to produce very accurate profiles and evaluations of the sales training providers that we cover.  We look at many more characteristics than are listed in the “category” column below, going through numerous briefings, checking customer references, and tapping into our significant community of sales training buyers and experts. Through this formal research, ESR provides a unique perspective and authoritative advice to corporations evaluating sales training company alternatives.
  

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• I’m only highlighting a partial list of names for each category.  Apologies to those companies that weren’t included in categories where they are strong.
  

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• If you are looking to engage with a sales training company/consulting firm, we strongly suggest you not just take this list and start calling these companies.  Statistically, that’s a big mistake for a lot of reasons.  One reason is the very company you think meets your requirements in one area, may fall dismally short in another. We see it all the time.  Selecting the right sales performance improvement partner is about understanding your own prioritized requirements and matching them against the capabilities of a number of potential providers, balancing strengths with inevitable challenges, trade-offs, and risks. For more information, enter your name and email, then download this ebook:  The Seven Sales Training Pitfalls and Seven Solutions for Sustained Success.

  If you are currently looking for a sales training partner, have a budget, are a decision-maker (or lead an evaluation team), and haven’t already made up your mind, give me a call. I’d be happy to walk you through what you have to do NOT to become yet another failed sales training initiative statistic. And we’re happy to evaluate, on your behalf, companies not included among those we cover.

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• Are there other sales training companies that are strong (or perhaps stronger) in these categories than those listed?  Sure.  Some aren’t listed because they haven’t been put through ESR’s vigorous evaluation process.  If you are interested in which other providers fall into each category, contact us at ESR.
  

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© 2012 — ES Research Group, Inc. — All Rights Reserved.

* Although ESR’s evaluations of these firms are in progress, analyst briefings have enabled us to determine they are among the leaders in these areas.

Click on the link for ESR’s Sales Training Profiles & Evaluations of these and other providers.

Filed under: Sales Training Companies | No Comments »

On December 7, 2011 ESR delivered a webinar presentation on the state of sales training (download the MP3 or PDF—free registration required).

It was an hour full of valuable intelligence and insight for sales training companies and sales trainers in corporate L&D organizations.

Here are some of the points I made during the event. First, a quick review of 2011. (A look at 2012 and beyond will follow in Part 2.)

• Sales training spend was up during the first half of 2011, then down during the second.
  

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• 63% of companies ESR surveyed during 2011 spend less than $3,000 per sales rep per year.
  

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• More and more companies cut back on travel, requiring virtual sales training alternatives.
  

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• We saw some strategic acquisitions:
• Mercuri International acquired the business simulation company, Celemi.
• Miller Heiman acquired channel management specialists Channel Enablers.
• The TAS Group acquired sales performance improvement provider InfoMentis.
  

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• We found larger sales training companies going broader in solution scope, adding capabilities in many areas, such as ROI, business acumen, talent management and more.
  

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• Many smaller sales training providers consolidated their offerings going more niche.  Smart move during a challenging economy.
  

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• In general, our opinion that sales training companies make lousy marketers was proven yet again.  There are notable exceptions, such as Miller Heiman, Richardson, and RAIN Group.
  

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• Training companies need sales leads as much as companies in any other sector.
  

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• During 2011, ESR saw increased demand for process and sales training content in coaching (for sales management) and selling to the corporate procurement function.
  

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• Our sales training buyer community still has a tough time differentiating one sales training provider from another. (That’s why they come to ESR.)
  

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• Here is what generated some buzz during 2011:
• Jeffrey Gitomer is writing the ASTD Sales Training Drivers blog.
• Tom Searcy, author of RFPs Suck, took over Geoffrey James’s blog (formerly Sales Machine) and is now writing for CBS.
• Geoffrey James, who recently published How to Say It: Business to Business Selling: Power Words and Strategies from the World’s Top Sales Experts, now writes for Inc.com.
• A few good books were published, including The Challenger Sale.
• The TAS Group released their Dealmaker Index.
• Some sales experts invested time and effort in social media—CustomerThink, Focus.com, Quora, LinkedIn Groups, and Twitter among others. The question is, will it pay off?

Be sure to catch Part 2, where I will share with you which companies ESR believes are leaders in numbers of different areas. Don’t want to miss it? Then subscribe to this blog:

Subscribe in a reader

Finally, join me this Wednesday, January 18, when I’m a guest for The TAS Group Webinar: The Evolution of Sales—2012 Vision.

Photo source: Endostock/Fotolia.com

Filed under: Book Recommendation, Buyers, coaching, sales training, Sales Training Companies | 1 Comment »

Yesterday I sold my plane. It is a 1978 Cessna 182Q. Seats 4. Cruises at 160 MPH. What a wonderful plane it is.

I bought the plane in 1995 after Datalogix International, a company where I was a principal, went public. I flew nearly 2,000 hours in the plane with trips to Florida, Atlanta, Chicago, Canada, Lake of the Ozarks, and many dozens of airports up and down the East Coast. I made 20 trips down the “Hudson River Corridor” at 900 feet, which always included a loop around the Statue of Liberty at 500 feet. (Check out this video from my plane.) I took a lot of people, especially kids, for their first plane ride. My special flights around Martha’s Vineyard were a treat in return for donations to some of our local charities. Read more »

Filed under: sales process | 8 Comments »

When we ask sales executives how they measure sales performance, 60% of them tell us that they don’t have a performance measurement system in place. Of the remaining 40%, a majority depend solely on a single lagging indicator: performance against quota/budget. If other metrics are even mentioned, they are typically the size/trending of their pipeline, the number of sales calls per week, or the percentage of proposals they submit that result in a win.

When you consider a typical enterprise, you’ll find that almost every department has a set of processes or procedures and metrics by which performance is measured: finance (GAAP), manufacturing (ISO 9000 and/or Six Sigma), customer service (customer satisfaction, such as Net Promoter), HR (employee retention, 360 degree surveys), logistics (throughput, on-time delivery), Information Technology (TCO: Total Cost of Ownership), and even marketing (direct marketing campaign conversion rates, for example). In most companies, the last bastion to institutionalize formal processes and comprehensive and accurate measurement is sales.

Why is Sales Last When It Comes to Measurement? Read more »

Filed under: Measurement, Sales Training Companies | No Comments »

Lauren Harper at Focus.com pinged me last week to contribute to a discussion about the worst sales training horror stories. Before I took down my sales training shingle in 2005, I had a lot of stories. One that came to mind was this, a slightly edited version of the one I posted as a comment on the Focus.com discussion:

Seven years ago I was flown to Lake Como, Italy, by the CEO of a global corporation based in Sweden. I was to facilitate a full-day workshop with ten country managers and division presidents. The subject was strategies for improving sales effectiveness within their business units. Not exactly sales training, but close enough… Read more »

Filed under: On the Road, sales training | 3 Comments »

Thanks to the more than 2,000 of you who, as of today’s count, joined our last Sales Thought-Leader Panel Series either live or via our MP3 archive.

Beginning in January, 2011, I will be moderating four new, unscripted, unedited panel discussions on today’s hot button sales issues. Join me online to listen, ask questions, and get valuable insights from 16 industry sales training industry leaders.

• Registration is free and easy
• Each expert panel lasts one hour
• 4 expert panelists per session
• No scripts, no PowerPoints, no posturing, positioning, or promoting.

Can’t attend the one(s) you’d like?  Register for the event(s), and as a no-show, we’ll send you instructions for downloading the MP3 archive. Read more »

Filed under: Buyers, Inside Sales, Interview, Leadership, Measurement, Presentations, Sales Training Companies | 2 Comments »

When it comes to an under-appreciated and under-leveraged B2B selling capability, financial/business acumen tops the list.  I believe this so strongly that in both editions of my book, How Winners Sell, I included a chapter on how to get a project funded. It taught readers figure how to cost-justify their products and services to their customers.

You may be aware of Executive Conversation, a sales performance improvement company that focuses on executive selling skills around financial and business acumen.  Executive Conversation (acquire ESR’s profile and evaluation of Executive Conversation) says there are five competencies required for B2B selling that are under-appreciated and under-leveraged:

1. Business Knowledge.  The ability to understand a customer’s business model and effectively interpret the macro economic factors impacting their performance.
2. Customer Insight.  The ability to gain the account insight required to identify new opportunities and to credibly engage around a customer’s strategic initiatives.
3. Financial Acumen.  The ability to interpret financial trends and analyze customer financial performance to pinpoint areas of need.
4. Return On Investment.   The ability to credibly quantify the financial impact of investing in your solutions using metrics meaningful to the customer.
5. Executive Engagement.  The ability to credibly engage, build relationships and sell at executive levels within customers.

Certainly Executive Conversation isn’t the only company that serves to transfer financial and business skills to salespeople.  Back in January, Mercuri International acquired Celemi, a business simulation company.  Smart move for Mercuri. Very good news for their clients.

Allow me to introduce another proponent of financial acumen, Jack Malcolm, who runs Falcon Performance Group, and is the author of Bottom-Line Selling: The Salesperson’s Guide to Improving Customer Profits. Jack was kind enough to answer some of my questions. Read more »

Filed under: Book Recommendation, Interview, sales training | 2 Comments »

Updated: On Wednesday, December 7th, at 12:00 ET, ESR delivered a complimentary webinar for sales trainers only. The subject was The State of The Sales Training Industry.

There are several relevant and important subjects that we covered, including a review of 2011, leaders in 15 different categories.  You know by now that ESR doesn’t believe there is a single “best” sales training company.  In fact, pursuing that line of thinking has gotten many companies seeking sales performance improvement in a great deal of trouble.

We also looked at the changing sales training buying patterns, the impact of technology on sales training, and a look at 2012 and beyond.

I discussed the challenges faced by sales trainers and sales training firms of different sizes.  Of course every training firm is different, but here are some generalizations: Read more »

Filed under: Presentations, sales training | 1 Comment »

I  recently ran into Brian Reilly in Cancun, Mexico, at a social event. With me being on the sales side and Brian on the marketing side, naturally, a conversation ensued. (No food was thrown, we assure you.)  Brian is the founder of Solerte Consulting. I thought it would be valuable for you to hear from someone I consider a very savvy marketing expert who understands that sales is marketing’s most important customer.

Dave Stein: How can the latest innovations in marketing automation technology help sales?

Brian Reilly: Marketing automation, especially in the B2B space, has come a long way in the last decade.  During that time we have seen sales force automation offered in an SaaS (software-as-a-service, a great example of which is Salesforce.com) environment experience tremendous adoption across verticals.  Best-in-class sales teams are managing their process automation and pipeline reporting through these tools to the great benefit of their companies. Read more of my interview with Brian

Filed under: Marketing, Measurement, Pipeline, Sales 2.0, Technology | 1 Comment »

When I’m asked about how much selling has changed in the past few years, the first point I always raise is the significant (and troublesome) changes in corporate procurement.

Strategic procurement/buying/sourcing isn’t a new trend. It’s been around for years.  Although they didn’t invent it, I look at Walmart as the organization that drove execution of the strategic sourcing model to new levels in the 90′s.

Desperate to reduce expenses beginning in late 2008, executive leadership in many corporations looked at the Walmart model and tweaked or entirely revamped how they would deal with suppliers going forward. Read more »

Filed under: Buyers, Interview, sales training, Sales Training Companies | 1 Comment »