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?

The root cause of the sales function being last in line is related to the personalities, traits, and established behavior patterns of many (often very smart, but right-brained) sales executives who came up through the ranks of sales themselves. Back when they were salesreps, process and measurement was uncommon in sales. It was much less of a critical component for success than it is today. At that same time, the engineers, accountants, and factory workers in that same company were driven by process—the output of their work carefully monitored, measured, and adjusted along the way by (often left-brained) management.

We know that relatively few companies measure the impact of sales training. Among the reasons they tell us are:

• Cost: They believe it’s too expensive
• Lack of staff expertise in measurement
• Internal tracking, analytics, and forecasting systems unreliable
• Lack of standard sales processes against which to measure
• Lack of sales competencies against which to measure
• Afraid measurement might prove it’s ineffective
• Sales cycle too long to allow measurement in reasonable time
• Too many changes at the same time to make measurement meaningful

We know that most of these are excuses and companies that wish to measure the return on their sales training spend can do it relatively easily and inexpensively.

What’s the answer?

As an integral component of your sales methodology, monitor five to eight carefully selected leading and lagging indicators to measure ongoing productivity—not activity—of every member of your sales team. Based upon those behavioral and performance indicators, you can make adjustments to your processes when necessary, redeploying resources, responding quickly to new competitive threats, and providing the field with the right messages, tools, strategies and tactics—before it’s too late.

Here are a few of the metrics companies employing performance measurement best-practices are using to gain transparency into what is really coming down the pipeline:

• Accuracy of reps’ projected dates for opportunities moving from one phase of the sales cycle to the next.
• Average opportunity attrition rate from one phase of the sales cycle to the next.
• Adherence of individual sales people to new behaviors learned during training.

One you have your sales process in place, especially the steps, actions, tasks, qualification criteria, and the metrics (like the examples above), you can automate this with a strong Sales 2.0 Analytics solution.

Installing, then monitoring leading and lagging sales performance indicators and making appropriate real time adjustments in approach, process, and actions is a critical component of stellar sales performance. As Peter Drucker said, “You can’t improve what you don’t measure.”

ESR’s Leadership Role in Methods for Measuring the Impact of Sales Training

In 2007, ESR began studying the discipline of measuring the impact of sales training. We published our first Guide to Measuring Sales Performance back then, and audited the sales training impact measurement programs and systems of a number of sales training companies, including Wilson Learning, The Complex Sale, Sales Performance International, and Performance Methods, Inc.

We learned a lot since then and have shared our knowledge with numbers of other sales training providers who have built their own measurement systems.

I’ve gathered four experts in the area of sales training measurement for a panel.  They will be sharing with you what works and what doesn’t with respect to measuring the impact of sales training.  Why don’t you join us?

Complimentary Webinar: Measuring the Impact of Sales Training:
How to Document the Quantitative Impact

Wednesday, January 11, 2012 – 12:00 ET / 9:00 PT / 1800 GMT

Panelists:

Tim Riesterer, Chief Strategy and Marketing Officer, Corporate Visions Dave Christofaro, Senior Program Manager, Sales Performance International LaVon Koerner, Chief Revenue Officer, RevenueStorm Bruce Wedderburn, EVP of Channel & Enablement, Huthwaite

Sponsors include:

• Chally Group Worldwide
• Sales Management Association

Photo source: Fotolia.com

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.

Measuring the Impact of Sales Training: How to Document the Quantitative Impact

Wednesday, January 11, 2012 – 12:00 ET / 9:00 PT / 1800 GMT

Panelists:

Tim Riesterer, Chief Strategy and Marketing Officer, Corporate Visions Dave Christofaro, Senior Program Manager, Sales Performance International LaVon Koerner, Chief Revenue Officer, RevenueStorm Bruce Wedderburn, EVP of Channel & Enablement, Huthwaite

Sales Leadership Strategies in a Virtual, Mobile, and Social World

Wednesday, January 25, 2011 – 12:00 ET / 9:00 PT / 1800 GMT

Panelists:

Dave Kurlan, CEO, Kurlan Associates Jim Brodo, VP Marketing, Richardson Beverly Lock, Principal, 3g Selling Donal Daly, CEO, The TAS Group

What Sales Management Needs to Know Today About Inside Sales and Cold Calling

Wednesday, February 8, 2012 – 12:00 ET / 9:00 PT / 1800 GMT

Panelists:

Gary Walker, EVP Channel Sales & Operations, CustomerCentric Selling Ron LaVine, Principal, Accelerated Sales Training Sharon Daniels, CEO, AchieveGlobal Leigh Hooker, COO, Miller Heiman

Enhancing Customer Relationships Through the Integration of Sales and Service

Wednesday,  February 22, 2012 – 12:00 ET / 9:00 PT / 1800 GMT

Panelists:

Sharon Daniels, CEO, AchieveGlobal Bob Branson, Principal, TACK-USA John Holland, Chief Content Officer, CustomerCentric Selling Jo Thompson, Procter (an Imparta Company)

Note: Other than an introduction of each participant and sponsor, there will be no promotion by panelists during the discussions.  In addition, questions from the audience will be answered live, via audio, by the panelists.

You will need a computer with Internet access and a telephone or VoIP capabilities to participate.

Call us at +1 (508) 313-9585 for details.

Photo Source: © Ivan Hafizov – Fotolia.com

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.

Marketing organizations have not been as lucky.  While sales has mastered their process on top of a solid tools foundation, marketing has traditionally been forced to work with a set of disparate tools that often don’t talk to each other.  Add to this the ever-expanding nature of marketing as additional channels are being added quarterly, if not more often.  Marketers must balance inbound channel spend against outbound channel spend and often rely on a patchwork of vendors—email, direct mail, website and others—to keep their demand generation machine running.  With the rapid evolution of SaaS marketing automation technology over the last 6-7 years, marketers are now starting to adopt a set of interconnected tools which excel at creating high-quality demand for sales.

Eloqua (an SaaS marketing automation provider) regularly cites statistics that show their customers experience big leaps in demand generation as a result of their tool.  Their contention is that, starting at the top of the funnel, leads are being more fully qualified before being passed to sales which results in conversion rate lift of 10-20% as a result.  This, of course, has positive downstream impacts as “won” opportunity rates and value are higher for leads generated and qualified using marketing automation tools and processes.  Eloqua, as an example, has even created an “RPM index” which measures the performance of companies who have adopted a revenue performance index tool, specifically Eloqua, against those who have not. This index shows that companies who have put significant efforts into marketing automation best practices grow at faster rates than those who do not.

DS: Why should marketing’s mastery of marketing automation and Revenue Performance Management (RPM) matter to sales executives?

BR: Revenue Performance Management represents a scientific approach to marketing—the combination of inbound and outbound activities that are required to produce, score and nurture high quality leads.  Better leads enable sales to win high-value opportunities more efficiently.  According to Forrester, companies that excel at nurturing leads not ready to purchase generate 50% more sales ready leads at 33% lower cost.

RPM was coined by Eloqua in 2010 to move the definition of the “marketing automation” away from something very tools-centric.  Tools are tools.  “RPM” captures the combination of tools, processes and people that it takes to generate more revenue more efficiently.  It focuses on the varied set of skills that it takes to do that—sales and marketing alignment, customer-centric program development, and insightful analytics.  Sales tools alone cannot do these things—even Salesforce.com has its limitations.  Salesforce.com is excellent at catching leads and providing a foundation for a world-class inside and field sales process but it is not the place to go to generate those leads.  Marketers need to build their process around a set of tools which includes outbound vehicles like email, direct mail, text and phone.  They also need to manage the inbound assets like landing pages, whitepapers and case studies.

It takes this combination of sales and marketing platforms—sales force automation combined with marketing automation—to create a revenue performance machine.

DS: ESR w0uld add sales process automation as a requirement these days… In any case, what responsibility does sales have for RPM?

BR: Revenue performance management in a high-consideration, B2B context does not work unless sales is on-board with the strategy.  Marketing can invest all the money in their budgets on tools, process and hard-to-find people in order to create a revenue performance machine but that money will be fundamentally wasted unless they have the buy-in of sales management.  Someone has to agree to catch and validate the high quality leads that marketing has worked so hard to produce.

Now, we all know that sales does not want to waste an inordinate amount of time chasing down poor quality leads.

DS: Or any time at all…

BR: Right.  There are just not enough hours in the day to waste on unqualified “mickey mouse” leads.  According to Forrester Research, 25% of marketers who adopt lead management processes report that sales teams contact prospects within one day.  Only 10% of marketers report the same follow-up without mature lead management processes.  That’s why the Sirius Decisions funnel definitions have become so popular over the last couple of years—because they work.  Sirius Decisions has provided a well-defined set of lead stages for sales and marketing to agree upon and implement.  If sales leadership wants to get the true value of RPM, it has an obligation to create this type of foundation for sales and marketing alignment.

Once aligned, collaborative sales and marketing teams  will begin to see the impact that mastery of RPM has on the top of the funnel.  If done correctly, sales will only have to deal with the hottest high quality leads.  When this happens, they can begin to turn to increasing the velocity at which leads and deals move through the funnel.  Once the fundamentals are sound, sales and marketing can work on globalizing (if relevant) and optimizing the processes.

DS: What does it take to succeed at RPM?

BR: First the bad news:  50% of respondents to a 2011 Focus survey stated they have not realized the full value of their marketing automation investment, and less than 25% use their platforms to their full potential.

DS: Shelf-ware.

BR: Regretfully, yes. Now, the good news:  marketing automation in the cloud is easier than it was a decade ago but it’s still not exactly “easy.”  It takes an executive team that has bought into the possibilities that marketing automation technology and the overarching concepts of RPM present.  RPM requires both a top-down and bottom-up approach to system adoption.  The executive team has to agree that they will manage their process through these tools while the field sales and marketing team must agree to leverage these tools.

Mastering RPM also requires creating an operational team to support the effort by creating processes for implementing new campaigns and creating reusable content.  Content is critical to making RPM work because content is what keeps both prospects and existing customers engaged.  Campaigns are heavily dependent on having content available to keep your product or service top-of-mind at critical points in the buyer’s journey.  Customers are often researching their buying decisions independent of sales and it’s 1:1 campaigns supported by valuable content that moves them from awareness to purchase..

Additionally, executives in the sales and marketing organizations must agree upon standard metrics definitions in order to make RPM successful.  By standardizing on a set of metrics and by defining how data is collected and calculated, organizations create a foundation on which measurements can be compared over time, across business units and around the globe.

DS: What kind of lift do organizations experience that invest in RPM?

BR: As I  mentioned above, Eloqua has created their “RPM Index” to try to better understand the impact of an RPM approach (not just tools) on an organization.  Similarly, Marketo, an Eloqua competitor, has created an “RPM Quotient”—their metric for benchmarking success through the use of their tool.  Marketo cites impressive numbers when discussing the impact of their tool on their customer’s business—a nearly 50% increase in campaign effectiveness, a 17% increase in sales wins and an 11% increase in contract value.

Marketo is telling a story similar to Eloqua’s:  using best-in-class marketing automation tools as the foundation for the revenue performance management strategy, innovative companies consistently demonstrate a significant increase in revenue (~25% in the first 12 months).  Forrester’s research supports this assertion:  46% of marketers with mature lead management processes facilitated by marketing automation have sales teams that follow up on more than 75% of marketing-generated leads.

From all of the research that’s been done, it’s clear that RPM works when properly implemented.  RPM really is just the next generation of CRM best practices that have evolved over the course of the last two decades.  What started as sales force and call center automation has grown to encompass both offline and online marketing.  With the advent of SaaS vendors like Eloqua, Marketo and Pardot, RPM has become far more accessible for cost-conscious companies outside of the Fortune 1000.  The rise of service companies like Solerte, created to support and nurture best practices, gives companies outside of the Fortune 1000 the ability to experience the positive impact of world-class revenue performance management.

Brian Reilly has over 15 years of CRM consulting experience and has worked on both the client- and the agency/consulting-side. Over the course of his career, Brian’s been successful at growing professional services organizations focused on marketing automation, CRM and ERP over the course of the last decade.

Brian has a track record of success as a start-up entrepreneur, executive and as a leading marketing automation consultant. His broad-based experience, combined with a background in customer insights, sales and marketing gives him a strong foundation in the CRM programs and application space.

Brian received his Master of Business Administration from the University of Texas at Austin, McCombs School of Business and a Bachelor of Arts from Binghamton University, SUNY. He has worked with leading CRM-focused companies like Dell, CDW and Logitech and for SaaS-focused consulting firms such as Astadia and Extraprise.

Here is a datasheet on Brian’s Revenue Performance Management Services.

Before the event, Donal asked if I would preview their new Dealmaker Index sales effectiveness assessment tool prior to its release.  I spent 15 minutes or so completing a series of questions about my personal selling approach, actions, and activities, and those, on a higher level, of ESR.

Before I tell you what I got for my effort, here is some background from The TAS Group’s press release.  “Based on an analysis of 92 sales performance factors, mapped against proven successful approaches, the Dealmaker Index measures the effectiveness of sales organizations and sales individuals across areas such as deal close rates, sales cycle management, value creation and sales opportunity development. It analyzes their activities, behaviors and attitudes and their strategic alignment with their companies and the resulting sales velocity they can achieve.”

The output was a very detailed road map of what I and my company needed to do to elevate performance. There are three outputs:

• The Executive Summary Report identifies 5 key action areas for immediate improvement, as well as an overview of the company’s Dealmaker Index.
• The Company Detailed Analysis and Recommendations Report, provides guidance to the company on Strategic Alignment, Sales Process Analysis, Sales Velocity, Sales Coaching, Social Media, Customer Retention, Competitive Differentiation, Sales Methodology, CRM and Revenue Performance Management. This comprehensive report, tailored for the individual company typical exceeds 3000 words of in-depth advice.
• The Personal Dealmaker Index Report looks at the performance of the individual sales professional, analyzing his or her capability, how he or she approaches a sales engagement, his or her personal sales perspectives and the efficacy of his or her use of sales systems and infrastructure.

Click on the graphic to see a full-size view of an excerpt of my results. This is one of the outputs from the tool.  Here is another.

I analyzed the reports from the Index comparing what its findings and recommendations and what I know to be ESR’s (and my personal) selling strengths and challenges.  After all, one of the services ESR providers to our sales training buyer clients is evaluating their sales effectiveness. That’s a core competency here at ESR. What I found is in the areas where the Dealmaker Index was inaccurate, I was somewhat inconsistent with my responses to the questions. ESR has a bit of an unusual selling model with a number of components, markets, channels, and products. I didn’t do a very good job of delineating them. GIGO.

For the average salesperson or sales manager, this tool is a really good place to start with a diagnosis of your selling challenges, validation of your strengths, and recommendations for both.  I don’t see any weaknesses in the tool.  If it were to provide an inaccurate report, the reason would be the person inputting the information wasn’t able or willing to provide accurate data.  Unlike the best psychometric tests, you can fool the Dealmaker Index, but who’d want to?

My recommendation is go to http://www.dealmakerindex.com. It’s free.  It’ll take you 15-20 minutes.  Read the output reports carefully.  I’d be very surprised if you didn’t learn something important.

By the way, Donal Daly will be delivering a complimentary webinar Thursday, November 17th at 8:30am PST / 11:30am EST 4:30pm GMT / 5:30 pm CET.  The subject: 92 Signposts to a Roadmap for Sales Success in 2012.  Here is a registration link.

The results show that, over the past two years, rapid advancements in technology, combined with a sluggish economy, have produced a dramatic leap forward in both the types of training provided and the subject matter delivered through virtual training.

The report was published today. Here is the press release: ESR’s 2011 Report on Virtual Sales Training.

These changes represent a significant and unprecedented evolution for the sales training industry. There is no going back to what everyone was doing just three or four years ago.

Here is some of what is covered in this Report:

• Average investment in sales training by salesrep
• Who makes sales training decisions
• Who is responsible for the sales training budget
• Mandates for virtual training
• The reasons companies train virtually rather than in traditional classrooms
• How long the improvement from virtual training lasts
• The differences between live virtual training and asynchronous (on-demand) virtual training
• The strengths and weaknesses of each
• What sales training content is best delivered virtually
• Delivery methods, including Internet- and computer-based
• Customization trends
• Relative increases and decreases in virtual versus live training
• Barriers to adopting virtual training and classroom training

This information is vital for sales organizations and training providers that want to thrive in this new environment.

This is one of the 10 charts in the 32-page Report that reveals changes in the sales training environment. (See note at bottom of post.)

Click on the image for a full-size rendition.

If you are an ESR sales training buyer or sales training provider subscriber, click here to access the Virtual Sales Training Report. The Report is included in your subscription.

Click on the link to purchase the Virtual Sales Training Report.

Important note: Written permission is required from ESR for quotation from this chart and/or any content in the Report or Executive Summary.  Getting permission to link to this post is not required.

As  Chief Strategy and Marketing Officer for Corporate Visions, Inc., he’s been driving an exciting new initiative, and driving it hard.  CVI recently announced that it will integrate a 3rd-party ROI measurement with its popular sales conversation skills training solution. The 90-day post-training assessment will track adoption, behavior change and business impact. The new solution will incorporate a custom survey developed and delivered by BeyondROI, a leading training performance measurement company. It’s a bold step and it places CVI among the elite with respect to measuring the impact of sales training.

I’ve wanted to interview Tim for a while. This new announcement provided us both with an opportunity.  Here’s the interview:

Dave Stein: What prompted you to so aggressively go after the issue of training ROI?

Tim Riesterer: The question always comes up… “How will you measure ROI?” Then after a bunch of go-rounds trying to determine the best way to do that, everyone starts to question whether training can get any of that credit… so, everyone reverts back to training event smile sheets. That is, until the end of a project and everyone wants to know what you got. We decided enough is enough. Every person who goes through the Power Messaging conversation skills training will be evaluated by a third-party company 90 days after the event to determine the impact.

DS: Why has it been so hard to get ROI?

TR: The challenge is, how much credit should you give the training program for changes in sales performance? You want to know how it impacts real KPI’s like closed business, cycle times, margin improvement, etc. However, when performance improves, everyone wants to tell you why it couldn’t be the training and lists all the other factors. But, if performance doesn’t improve, these same people want to tell you why the training didn’t work. This bob-and-weave, rope-a-dope technique keeps the players on all sides off balance just enough that they give up in frustration.

DS: What are the most important ROI elements to measure?

TR: The key for us is working with a third-party expert. Someone who has proven skills and processes for capturing the business impact of something as difficult to quantify as sales training. Scott Watson at BeyondROI has identified three elements that need to be measured and correlated that sales performance and training impact. The first is behavior change… are salespeople really adopting and using the techniques, and if so when, where, how? The second is “definite difference”… does high or low usage of the new techniques correlate with better or worse performance against important metrics such as closed business or pipeline size, including citing specific deals and the relative impact the new techniques had on the deal? The third is feedback for coaching… making the techniques sticky and long-lasting requires knowing what areas are working, what areas are not. What players are succeeding, who isn’t, and what the most successful people are doing differently. This information on individual rep performance can be used for coaching and refreshing.

DS: What kind of results are you seeing and what’s the reaction of your clients?

TR: In some of the earliest results we are seeing from companies like Philips and Dell, we’ve been able to track that salespeople with high usage (70+%) of the techniques are closing 3 times the business that reps with low usage numbers. Also, salespeople are identifying millions of dollars worth of deals where Power Messaging made “all” or “a significant” difference in 60-70% of the wins. We’re also seeing overall adoption and usage rates at over 90% where people admit to using the techniques regularly after 90 days. The clients are thrilled with the results and the quality of the insights gained from assessment. They know how it’s working and they know what areas they need to shore up. So, it provides a business case and a roadmap for ongoing coaching and improvement.

Disclosure: CVI subscribes to ESR’s products and services for sales training providers.

Tim Riesterer is a recognized thought leader and practitioner in sales messaging. He leads the strategy, marketing and products initiatives for Corporate Visions. His is the co-author of two books: Customer Message Management and Conversations that Win the Complex Sale.  You can view a mini-webcast on their implementation of integrated ROI here.

Related content:

• Measuring Sales Performance
• How to Select the Right Sales Training Provider
• ESR’s Profile and Evaluation of Corporate Visions, Inc. (fee).

Important Announcement:

• Sixteen of the World’s Top Sales Experts are Meeting.  Get a Seat at the Table. Here.

Over the years, I’ve been fortunate to have had the opportunity to coach and mentor many talented sales professionals, sales leaders, and other executives around the general subject of effective selling within their organizations. I provided them with support, contacts, insights, my experience, expertise, opinions and balanced and honest feedback.  I never charged a fee for being a mentor, although there is a definite balance of value for a mentor/protégé relationship to work.  In other words, there has to be something in it for the mentor.  For that reason, I selected protégés very carefully.

From my perspective, coaching is more task oriented and process-driven as compared to mentoring, which is related to supporting more strategic changes in behavior, capabilities and attitudes.

Here are some considerations relating to mentoring:

1.     Do you need a mentor?

The answer is probably yes.  There are times that most of us just aren’t able to gain the wisdom and knowledge necessary to move to the next level in our jobs or careers.  Some challenge may seem insurmountable, and without the ability to engineer and effectively execute a dramatic break-through by ourselves, we are stuck.  An effective mentor can provide honest assessment, insight, the objective perspective and the tools required for ongoing success, especially during these challenging times.

2.     What qualities should a mentor have?

For a relationship with a mentor to be effective for you the mentor must be willing to take the time to work with you, be a good communicator, have a basic understanding of psychology, and be knowledgeable about the subject(s) in which you seek guidance.  They must be discreet, caring, and enthusiastic about helping people overcome challenges.

3.     Where do you find a mentor?

Due to political risks, I always recommend that you recruit a mentor outside your company.  It certainly shouldn’t be your current boss. With that in mind, consider some or all of the following:  a former boss from another company, a known expert in the domain in which you are seeking knowledge, someone in your business (or even personal) network, or a recommendation from someone you respect in the area in which you are seeking improvement.

4.     What are your responsibilities?

For a mentor/protégé relationship to work, you must be willing to work hard at improvement.  That means defining and accepting your shortcomings and being open to changing or forming new habits through adopting new strategies and tactics. You must be willing to be responsible for executing what you and your mentor decide is the best course of action.  You have to be honest, objective, appreciative, motivated and have the courage to change.  Be certain you have the motivation and time to do what it takes to progress to that next level in each area of improvement you choose before you recruit your mentor.

5.     What’s in it for the mentor?

What I get out of mentoring is the satisfaction of helping someone who needs and wants my assistance.  In addition, I get to improve my own coaching, leadership, communication, and management skills.  I often get new ideas and insights from my protégés.  And my protégés provide me with an expansion of my business and professional network.

6.     How should you proceed once you have recruited a mentor?

Devise a plan, together.  Jointly assess your situation: where you feel you are presently; the issues or problems that may be limiting your professional growth and advancement; what has worked for  you in the past and what has not.  Next talk about your goal—what you want to achieve and by when.  Then you and your mentor can discuss various options or strategies and related tasks/tactics to achieve those goals.  If you have put appropriate metrics in place related to the goal, there will be no question at all when you have achieved it.

7.  What should you not do?

There is one last point I feel obliged to make: Don’t confuse mentoring with picking someone’s brain. Experts tell me it’s insulting and has nothing whatsoever to do with a mutually beneficial professional mentor/protégé relationship.

Photo credit: Sandy Jones-Kaminski

The experts were:

• Brian Dietmeyer, CEO and Co-Founder, Think! Inc.  Brian answered questions about the power of procurement and how companies can begin to regain some of the ground lost as strategic sourcing has surged over the past decade. Previously, Brian and I discussed strategic negotiation on this podcast.
  

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• Braham Shnider, CEO and Founder, Channel Enablers.  Braham is an expert in the area of building and managing sales channels.  Braham said during the call that 70% of  products are sold not through direct sales approaches, but through channels.  I had some questions for Braham in this interview.
  

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• LaVon Koerner, President and Founder, Revenue Storm.  LaVon is an expert in demand creation, among other areas.  His explanation of how salespeople must create, rather than capture, demand was very compelling. A while back, LaVon and I had a great chat on this podcast.
  

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• Rick Page, CEO and Founder, The Complex Sale, Inc.  I asked Rick to join this advanced selling round table because of his thought-leadership in the area of political selling. His comments resonated among the whole panel.  I interviewed Rick a while back on this podcast.
  

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• Steve Andersen, Founder and Managing Partner, Performance Methods, Inc. Steve’s company, PMI, is a leader in the area of strategic account management.  Steve shared a few startling trends going on within his clients’ organizations around this critical sales-related function. Steve and I got to discuss PMI and his view of strategic account management on this podcast.
  

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Among the subjects our experts discussed were talent management challenges, future advanced selling trends, collaboration with clients and customers, and how important business acumen is in a complex selling environment.

So here’s the good news

If you missed the round table, here is the MP3 recording, courtesy of Focus.com.  Great working with those folks.

Photo credit: Fotolia.com

Based upon ES Research Group’s experience and regular surveys, most decisions regarding third party sales training content providers are made for the wrong reasons in the wrong way. The result is wasted time, money, and significant lost business opportunity. Even if they don’t outsource sales training, participants will learn how to get a significantly more accurate and comprehensive understanding of the learning needs of their own sales organization and how to meet those requirements through in- or outsourcing content and training.  Specific third-party sales training companies will be mentioned as examples of outsourced alternatives that provide proven value for different customer requirements.

There will be plenty of take-aways, including my lists of:

• 4 sobering facts about sales training;
• 6 best practices to avoid a sales training train wreck;
• 11 basic sales training provider evaluation components; and,
• 12 critical sales training provider capabilities.

The webinar has been archived.  Here is the link.

Graphic: © 2010 — ES Research Group, Inc.  All Rights Reserved.

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 Ownership¹), 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. (Some sales training companies are leaders in the area of helping their clients measure sales performance.)

Why is Sales Last When It Comes to Measurement?

The root cause of the sales function being last in line is related to the personalities, traits, and established behavior patterns of many (often right-brained) sales executives who came up through the ranks of sales themselves. Back when they were salesreps, process and measurement was uncommon in sales. It was much less of a critical component for success than it is today. At that same time, the engineers, accountants, and factory workers in that same company were driven by process—the output of their work carefully monitored, measured, and adjusted along the way by (often left-brained) management.

Today those former sales reps, who are now sales leaders, are behind the curve when it comes to process and, especially, measurement. They didn’t “grow up” with it, and now they are too busy to embrace it. Instead, they are regularly involved with helping the bottom third of their team drive business while hoping to somehow make their numbers, depending on forecasts aggregated from uncalibrated individual pipelines from their reps.

What’s the answer?

As an integral component of your sales methodology, monitor five to eight carefully selected leading and lagging indicators to measure ongoing productivity—not activity—of every member of your sales team. Based upon those behavioral and performance indicators, you can make adjustments to your processes when necessary, redeploying resources, responding quickly to new competitive threats, and providing the field with the right messages, tools, strategies and tactics—before it’s too late.

Here are a few of the metrics companies employing performance measurement best-practices are using to gain transparency into what is really coming down the pipeline:

• Accuracy of reps’ projected dates for opportunities moving from one phase of the sales cycle to the next.
• Average opportunity attrition rate from one phase of the sales cycle to the next.
• Adherence of individual sales people to new behaviors learned during training.

One you have your sales process in place, especially the steps, actions, tasks, qualification criteria, and the metrics (like the examples above), you can automate this with a strong Sales 2.0 Analytics solution.

The Bottom Line

Installing, then monitoring leading and lagging sales performance indicators and making appropriate real time adjustments in approach, process, and actions is a critical component of stellar sales performance. As Peter Drucker said, “You can’t improve what you don’t measure.”