Dave Stein's Blog for Sales Leaders

This morning I delivered the keynote speech at Richardson’s 2008 Client Forum at the Sofitel in downtown Philadelphia.  I was honored to have been provided the opportunity to address their personnel, their clients and a few important business partners.  Richardson is a company that continues to be a leader in the sales training arena. 

Linda Richardson herself is someone that I’ve respected for many years—long before I founded ESR.  She’s oozes experience and insight, is a wonderful communicator and a charming person.  If you haven’t read any of her books, you should.  Start with Perfect Selling to get an idea how she and her company think about selling. 

Linda has built a solid team.  David DiStefano, CEO and President, is an enthusiastic, committed and knowledgable leader. He comes out of PWC and brings that flavor of professionalism to the party.  I sat with Jim Brodo, VP of Marketing, last evening at their client dinner before the event.  Jim and I see many things the same way.  He’s got a tough job, but does it exceedingly well.  My sponsor was Debbie Antonelli, Richardson’s SVP of Sales, who hosted the event.  What a great job.

The topic of my talk was Sales Effectiveness 2012. I shared with the audience some sobering sales research statistics—what I’ve been writing about on this blog and the subject of much of ESR’s work to date.  The research paints a pretty dismal picture—high salesrep and manager attrition rates, disturbing forecasting statistics, the pains of mis-hiring, lack of sales process and measurement.

I then discussed five critical imperatives that companies must implement for them to maintain, if not gain, a leadership position in their market over the next four years.

We had a number of stimulating discussions during my time with the audience.  Richardson’s guests included learning and sales professionals from some well-known (mostly large) technology, financial services and other companies.  Additional presenters included Patrick Stakenas, CEO of Forcelogix and Chris Hens from White Springs.  Both are Richardson technology partners, providing critical components to Richardson’s Sales 2.0 technology-enabled selling strategy.  I was sorry that I couldn’t stay for the rest of the day.  Patrick and Chris, through the software technologies they provide, are making great strides supporting the deployment and use of sales process and measurement.  There can be no compromise in those area. Sales has a lot of catching up to do. 

Richardson is a class act.  Not only does ESR cover them as one of the leading vendors, but we had the opportunity to recommend that they be included on a long list for a client’s evaluation earlier this year.  Richardson won the business.  That project is underway.  We’ll be reporting on the progress of that engagement over time.

Richardson isn’t the perfect solution for every companies’ sales performance improvement requirements.  But they’re a serious player; they are making substantial forward progress, have a track record and history of innovation and customer success, and have an experienced and committed team.  All that adds up to make them a winner.

Photo: Cosmos.com

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Filed under: Book Recommendation, Marketing, Measurement, Methodology, On the Road, Presentations, Professionalism, Research, Sales 2.0, Sales Training Companies