Kadient Is Serious About Sales Effectiveness

TweetThe more I know about them, the more I’ve been impressed with Kadient.  I really like their playbook approach, the people I’ve met on their team, and their straightforward, no B.S. approach to sales effectiveness.  After receiving an email from Rich Berkman, Vice President, Sales Enablement Strategy, about his new eBook, Dive Deeper into Your [...]

Dealmaker Genius. There Are No Excuses Anymore.

TweetPrior to our briefing last week by The TAS Group executives in advance of today’s announcement, we were somewhat skeptical.  We thought claims they made in their YouTube videos were more than a bit outrageous, like this one from their press release: “Dealmaker Genius uses over 20,000 core knowledge elements and more than one million [...]

Sales Training: 12 Obstacles We Must Overcome

TweetBack in October I delivered the keynote at SMT‘s conference.  I shared with the audience ESR’s list of 12 obstacles that must be overcome for sales training to begin to have the degree of impact that a few the leading sales training companies are having with every client. Sales training is most often reactive. We [...]

More Excuses For Not Doing The Right Thing About Sales Effectiveness

TweetDave Brock wrote a terrific post about sales process.  It sparked me to write about an issue that has been troubling me. I’m not going to put forward any more arguments on the subject of whether or not process important in selling.  There is enough research out there—from ESR, from other research firms, and a [...]

Inside The Sales Training Industry (Part 1)

TweetI finally got around to meeting my telephone and e-mail colleague, Tom Martin, face-to-face a few weeks ago.  Tom is someone I hold in high regard for his experience, integrity and deep understanding of the sales training industry. Tom is a 20-year veteran of the sales methodology and training industry, with a diverse set of [...]

Sales Playbooks

TweetA few weeks ago the folks at Kadient briefed me on their approach and their sales performance improvement tools.  As you would expect, I posed the chicken-and-egg question with respect to what order a company should implement Kadient’s tools versus installing and implementing a sales methodology.  I liked their answers. I picked up a tweet [...]

ESR's Approach For A Sales Performance Improvement Initiative

TweetAs ESR is completing our Sales Training Vendor Guide we are updating a number of our models.  Here is a presentation of our sales training approach model that we deliver to project teams tasked with finding, evaluating, and selecting sales training companies. The content is based upon work we’ve done with clients during the past [...]

Here's What's Going On

TweetESR has a unique perspective on sales performance improvement. We don’t deliver sales training or sales consulting. We’re sales training industry observers, analysts, researchers and advisors to our clients on what works in sales effectiveness and training. Here’s what’s been going on at ESR: A large client in the financial services sector is working very [...]

Miller Heiman. What A Brand!

TweetWhen it comes to marketing, Miller Heiman leads the pack.  I recently spoke with Elizabeth Vanneste, their Chief Marketing Officer. Elizabeth brought Miller Heiman into four telecommunications companies where she had previously worked. She joined the Miller Heiman team last June as a sales VP and took over marketing three months ago. Elizabeth shared with me [...]

Checklists: For Surgeons, Pilots and… Salespeople

TweetI believe in checklists.  Clearly the medical community just got the message as well.  A study published online by the New England Journal of Medicine this week shows that adopting a surgical safety checklist (PDF) reduced deaths and complications by more than a third.  From the Wall Street Journal: Researchers collected data on nearly 8,000 [...]