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.

Everyone seems to want to know why I sold the plane.  Here are a few reasons: First, I wasn’t flying enough, and that’s dangerous.  See below. Second, the cost of flying has skyrocketed in the past five years. Fuel is more than $6.00 per gallon, and at 13 gallons per hour, that adds up.  And since my plane was 34 years old, there was always something that needed repair or replacement.  There are no cheap repairs on an airplane. Third, I’m not comfortable burning up fuel tanks full of 100-octane leaded gasoline just to have some fun. It’s a carbon footprint issue for me.

From the time I started flying in 1994, I learned a lot. And not just about piloting an airplane. I learned that:

• Practice makes perfect. Flying on instruments in the rain, at night, into an airport you’ve never visited before takes a lot of skill. There is no on-the-job training here. If you aren’t on top of your instrument flying skills, you’re toast.
  

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• Rules are made to be followed. FAA regulations are numerous, serious, detailed, and designed to reduce the many risks associated with flying. Break one, and you have taken the first step to a potentially disastrous situation.  A few times I inadvertently broke the rules and each time, could have easily wound up in a dangerous situation. I’m happy to expand on this if anyone is interested.
  

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• You have to be true to yourself. Sounds corny, but it isn’t at all. 99% of what pilots do is self-policed. As just one example, the FAA does not check that you’ve done six instrument approaches in the prior six months when you file a instrument flight plan. If you haven’t, you’re at serious risk, and you have only the person in the mirror to tell you not to do it. It’s sobering to have that degree of responsibility. By the way, few pilots I know cheat the system.  Just read through the NTSB (National Transportation Safety Board) accident reports as I did every month, and you’ll see that pilot error is a significant factor in most private plane accidents, and those errors are often the result of breaking the rules.
  

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• The brain is capable of so much more than we give it credit for. I once read that a lone pilot, flying a challenging instrument approach, expends seven times the mental effort of a surgeon during an operation.  I don’t know whether that’s true, but one of the reasons I’ve sold my plane is that I no longer fly enough to keep that razor-sharp edge.
  

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• Process is what it’s all about. We use procedures, checklists, and innumerable other routines. If you don’t like to use that stuff, you shouldn’t fly.
  

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• Subjectivity and emotion can be very dangerous.  We know from accident reports that pilots can lose situational awareness. At night or in the clouds, you can literally be flying upside down or in a dive without ever realizing it.  JFK Jr.’s accident, very close to where I live, unfortunately is only one example of that.  Gut feel and instinct will only take you so far.  That’s why we are drilled over and over to read and interpret our control panel instruments, not to trust our senses.
  

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What am I going to do without this plane I loved so much?  I’d tell you, but it’s a beautiful afternoon in January, so  I’m off for a ride on my newly acquired Honda Shadow 750 motorcycle.  Vrrooommmm…

By the way, if you see any parallels between what I learned from flying and what you learned about selling, please let us know in a comment. Come on, be part of the conversation…

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.

Dave Stein: Proponents of employing a formal sales process in B2B selling say it’s the key to winning.  Opponents say it inhibits the creativity that salespeople need to get the job done.  What is Kadient’s perspective on the importance of sales process?

Kadient Team (KT): Kadient is a proponent of employing a formal sales process (the science) and believes that in doing so, there is still plenty of room to allow a salespeople to be creative (the art) in how they engage and deliver within a formal sales process.  Deploying a sales process will allow an organization to identify (and learn) what the successful, repeatable sales activities are and what the quota-achieving reps do to succeed in specific selling situations. This information is what will help drive improved sales results across the board.  If a company is not working to formalize its sales processes, they are simply being negligent as there is widespread proof from analysts that deploying a formal sales process drives significant improvements in overall sales performance compared with those who do not.  We embrace a concept that our Sales Playbooks are “guardrails” for the sales reps and not a set of “handcuffs.”  This allows the new sales rep in an organization to use and follow as much of the sales playbook that they need to become revenue producing as fast as possible.  And, for the experienced sales person, the Sales Playbook is designed to give them the key activities and content they need to move their opportunity forward faster and allow them to take on more opportunities in their pipeline.

DS: Explain to us what sales playbooks are.

KT: While sales playbook is not a new term, traditionally they are synonymous with a pitch book, champion kit or the 25 lb. binder provided to a sales person following a sales kick off or sales training. They contain all of the information used to educate sales for delivering a company’s products and solutions. Some have moved to delivering them electronically on a CD, DVD, Thumb-Drive, or through a smattering of links on a company’s intranet.

Kadient has taken the notion of the traditional sales playbook and made them interactive, dynamic and embedded them within the CRM system. Kadient’s Sales Playbooks align situation-specific sales and marketing strategies, content, tools, and coaching with the customer’s buying cycle / company’s sales process. They maximize sales productivity by delivering this information contextual to the selling situation that a salesperson is working, all within the system where they work their opportunities—their CRM.

DS: How do they help salespeople win business?

In today’s technology enabled world, information about a company, its products, value proposition and competition are readily available and buyers are more knowledgeable than ever before.  Kadient Sales Playbooks spotlight what a salesperson needs to do next to advance an opportunity and reinforces the sales process/sales training with proven sales strategy and tactics. Salespeople are able to drill down into specific activities they need to execute, and complete them, right from within their CRM and in doing so, they are provided with the right information they need to have the meaningful conversations required to advance and close opportunities. Specific competitive sharp sticks, the precise value statements for the products they are selling, and the exact proof points they need for a particular type of opportunity are served up to them—when they need them.

DS: Would you share with us a customer success?

KT: Polycom, the world leader in unified communications, has enabled their global sales force with Kadient Playbooks. In just 6 weeks, Polycom rolled out 12 vertical based playbooks whose use has resulted in significant productivity increases across their salesforce.  Experienced and newer salespeople have been using these playbooks to get to the information they need to work their opportunities much more efficiently than in the past and they have the confidence that the content they are being served up through playbooks is relevant, correct and current.

It’s not just about time savings, though, it’s about changing and improving the way salespeople sell.  Larry Ball, Senior Director of Global Sales Enablement, says, “We have a vast array of products reps are expected to sell. If reps aren’t comfortable with the products or solution positioning, they default back to what they know. Playbooks give them the confidence to have conversations about all our solutions and not just stick with what they know.”

Polycom is leveraging the playbooks analytics at all levels of their organization to  deliver to the bottom line and get a better handle of forecast, “The forecast metrics are key – specifically, knowing if a deal is over or understated,” says Larry. “This information is tremendously useful for every sales manager who doesn’t have the time to go on sales calls but does have to forecast. This way they can know if the numbers they are getting from their salespeople are real or not.”

Note: ESR published an ESR/Brief™ on Kadient entitled, Kadient—A Helping Hand in Sales Process.  It can be downloaded for $29.95 from ESR’s website.

Photo credit: Fotolia.com

I asked tough questions during the briefing, but I got answers that made sense.  Every one of them.

They suggested that I log onto the new Dealmaker Genius customized opportunity management process application.  A few days later I did.

Here’s how it works:  Based upon the industry you’re selling into, how your customers buy, and certain characteristics regarding your sales approach, products and services, the application poses a series of questions about what it takes to successfully manage a sales opportunity.  It proposes a very comprehensive list of qualification criteria, allowing you to accept, change, or delete.  You can add criteria as well.  When your list is complete, it then cycles back and asks for the importance, or weighting factor, for each criterion.

The end result is a documented sales process, replete with metrics—for example, how much potential business must be in each stage for a rep to achieve their targets.

The results of this process documentation exercise can be incorporated into The TAS Group’s Dealmaker sales performance automation application. But here’s the thing…  The output from the 15-minute exercise can be used as a stand-alone tool as well, or as the foundation for customizing their existing CRM application.

Powerful.

Here’s my quote from the press release:  “For the experienced sales leader, this is better than sliced bread.  Rather than spending time and money on tips and tricks with little sustained impact, being able to create a customized sales process for their own business can set them on the path to lasting, measurable sales performance improvement.”

This is another big step by The TAS Group in providing sales professionals with appropriate technology that will enable them to be more effective and efficient.

I’d be hard-pressed to accept any excuses from process-averse sales leaders as to why they wouldn’t avail themselves of this tool and the benefits that it will bring.

Photo: © Albert Lozano-Nieto – Fotolia.com

When I tell them that’s not a question I can easily answer, many offer to pay me just for providing them with “just one name.”

If they press me for an answer I take a deep breath and say…

I first need you to tell me just a bit about the company seeking the best sales training firm:”

• What do they sell?
• How do they sell it?
• How well do they sell it?
• Why do they win?
• Why do they lose?
• How long is their sales cycle?
• Is it a complex or transactional sale?
• Do they sell to committees or individual buyers?
• What resources are required to support a rep?
• How do their buyers buy?
• Who are their competitors?
• What’s their go-to-market strategy?
• How are leads generated?
• What percent of market share do they own?
• What are their business goals and objectives for the coming quarter, year and three years out?
• How well is the sales team performing? What percentage of sales reps are at or above quota?
• What processes and tools do they currently have in place?
• What geographic territories do they cover? In what languages? With what local cultural requirements?
• How is the company structured?
• What about their sales channels?
• What compensation and incentive approach do they employ?
• How well do the first line managers manage?
• What gaps exist in management skills and capabilities?
• Do they coach effectively to a process?
• What analytic and measurement systems are in place?
• How well is sales integrated with other functions within the company especially marketing and service?
• What is their propensity to change?
• Are the corporate leaders ready for a business transformation?
• How much time, resources, and money are they willing to invest in it?
• Which vendors have already been engaged with this company?
• What learning mechanisms and tools are in place?
• How diverse are individuals within the sales team with respect to experience, skill, effectiveness, business savvy, age, learning preferences, etc.?
• What are the company’s annual revenues?
• How much are they willing to invest in a sales effectiveness initiative?
• What technology, if any, is currently supporting the sales function?
• Are they thinking about training strategically or tactically?
• Who is currently providing training?
• What do they think their biggest sales challenge is?
• What special skills, if any, are required for sales effectiveness?  This question alone requires discussions with many diverse stakeholders and is a critical component of ESR’s discovery process.

Do you get my point? No single sales performance improvement provider is right for every company’s requirements.  If you’re looking for the best one for your business, you’ve got to start with requirements. Skip that step and you just become another statistic.

Photo source: www.Jeopardy.com

You know how, at this time of year, all the media review the past year (or in this case, decade) and talk about advancing into the next one?  Here’s one for you:  I may have the attribution wrong, but I believe it was Confucius who said,

The best time to plant a tree was ten years ago.  The second best time is now.

What makes that resounding message relevant is ESR’s business outlook for 2010.  I’m certain that the increase in upcoming projects is partially a result of ESR’s brand getting broader and wider recognition—we’ve been in business now for four years.  And I know that some of that uptick can be attributed to an apparent dose of business optimism here in the U.S. and in some other parts of the world.  Companies are willing to spend money on sales performance improvement.

What is really encouraging is what the sales stakeholders in our current and new client companies are telling us.  They’ve had it with the recurring cycle of missing sales targets, getting some tactical training, and seeing no improvement.  They are taking action.  They’re planting the tree now.  Who cares about what they didn’t do ten years ago.

I don’t think you want to see another list of excuses that sales leaders use to justify not taking the right action.  (For those of you who are new to this blog and are curious, you can look here.)  So on the positive side, for many of you, changing your approach to selling—even in what might be relatively minor ways—can have an impact on performance this year.  As long as you do the right things in the right order.

I’d love to have you join me in a virtual toast on December 31^st, 2010 and share with me what you did during 2010 to change your team’s situation—what trees you planted during 2010.

My wish for you is health and success in 2010—however you define it.

1. Sales training is most often reactive. We ask VP of sales what their sales training strategy is.  The answers we get would indicate that many either don’t understand what the word strategy means or they do, but it doesn’t apply to training and developing their own people.  A tactical approach to sales performance improvement is as much a contradiction in terms as I can imagine.  It doesn’t work.
   

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2. Wrong people in the sales and sales management positions. I’ve written about this before.  It’s a very, very serious problem.  ESR estimates that mis-hiring will continue to significantly hinder sales effectiveness in 2010 with only a single-digit increase in the number of companies employing a formal hiring methodology for sales people and managers.  We need to fix that.
   

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3. Selling requirements are not really understood. When ESR assesses our client’s sales effectiveness, we often uncover things that they themselves don’t see or understand.  If a company delivers sales training without an objective and comprehensive understanding of their sales-related challenges, it just won’t be effective.  And companies do that every day.
   

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4. No foundation methodology in place. I hope you’ve been reading what experts like Jonathan Farrington and Dave Brock have been posting about sales methodology and process.  Check out the leading industry experts’ research reports.  Is there any question at all that a sales methodology must be the backbone of a company’s sales approach?  I write about this subject often as well.  Let me ask a simple question.  If you don’t train sales reps on how to effectively and efficiently use your sales process, what do you train them on?  Some isolated tactics?  A few tricks and tips?  We’ll never get to real sales productivity that way.  If it was going to work, it would have worked by now, right?
   

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5. Flawed training company selection. Literally every day I speak with buyers of sales training who have, as a group, been through all the programs with all the leading trainers.  Yet they are still seeking the right trainer.  No sales trainer fits every training situation.  In fact, no sales trainer fits most situations.  The ones ESR covers are very good—industry leading, in fact—for specific situations.  When a company selects the wrong partner for their unique situation, it’s like going to an ear, nose and throat doctor when you’ve cracked a tooth.  Same general area, but oh, so wrong.
   

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6. No measurement. Al Case and I just completed a feature article for ASTD’s T+D magazine about how to measure sales performance improvement.  There is absolutely no reason why sales trainers and their clients can’t work together to specifically measure not only the financial impact of the training (and process) work, but also use a measurement system to assure that everyone is adhering to what they learned.  I’ll have a downloadable PDF for you on this subject when the article is published.  (Good reason to subscribe to this blog!)
   

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7. Having a traditional, live, instructor-led training approach only. If you are not leveraging technology to deliver learning, you’re behind the times.  If you insist that your salespeople can only learn sardine-canned into a conference room at an airport hotel, you’re wrong.  These days, technology-enabled learning has come a long way.  Companies like The Brooks Group, The TAS Group, Richardson, Miller Heiman, Imparta, SPI and others have developed some innovative learning (and in some cases, selling) applications.
   

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8. Sacrificing learning reinforcement and coaching. The importance of learning reinforcement (including coaching) is undisputed among researchers and impartial experts in the sales effectiveness industry.  Event-based training without reinforcement is a waste of time and money.
   

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9. Lack of investment in tools to support new selling requirements. Although there are wide variations depending on industry, salespeople need technology not only to learn more, but specifically to sell more effectively and efficiently as well.  They need tools to manage their pipelines, accounts, opportunities.  They need tools for research, networking, communication, collaboration, gaining knowledge, creating and finding leads.  Do we leave them to fend for themselves?  All of this must be integrated into a strategic approach to sales effectiveness, of which training, of course, is a critical component.
   

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10. The disconnect between corporate learning and sales. In many larger companies there is a long-lived disconnect between the training and sales departments.  There are numbers of reasons for this.  A team of us working with Brian Lambert at ASTD are tackling this issue head-on in 2010.  For now, so long as that disconnect exists, sales is disadvantaged.
    

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11. The continued hope that tips, tricks, and new toys will save the day. I can’t ever leave this point out.  Look here for more.
    

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12. Reduced budgets for sales training. The stats aren’t in but we expect the sales training spend in 2009 to be way, way down.  Buyers of sales training won’t really every be able to get the protected budgets they need until they track the results of training and can provide a credible, achievable ROI to executive management.
    

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Here they are again:

Those are the challenges that every sales trainer and every company looking to improve the effectiveness of their sales team must overcome.  Let me know how I can help.

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 there is a wheelbarrow full of studies and surveys from vendors like HR Chally, Miller Heiman, and many more—that proves that employment of a pragmatic, widely complied-with sales methodology (and its associated processes) results in more sales, often at higher contract values, with shorter times to close.  It’s a fact.

Just for clarification, allow me to define two often confused terms:

Methodology: A formal, documented and universal system consisting of processes, methods, principles, tools, learning, approaches, strategies and measurement designed, built and supported for the purpose of achieving sales effectiveness.

Process: A formal or informal, documented or undocumented systematic series of actions or steps directed to achieving a specific goal.  We want formal and documented processes.  Examples would be qualification process, hiring process and opportunity management process.  Informal and undocumented processes, when placed in the hands of process-averse managers and salespeople, just don’t get followed.

So what’s my problem?  The ever-expanding list of excuses from some sales leaders as to why process (they really mean methodology) isn’t good for them, their companies, and their sales teams.

Most recently I heard, “It stifles creativity.”

Any sales trainer or consultant who takes a strategic approach to sales effectiveness will tell you that when they build a methodology with their client, they have a full understanding of where creativity, and adaptability, and accountability, and any other “-ilities” are required and how flexibility for those capabilities (two more “-ilities”) get built in.  Personally, I’ve been involved in methodology-building dozens of times across many industries.  Not only do we allow for the “art” component of selling—in fact we encourage it.  We encourage creativity.  We build in room, guidance, and support for the relationship building and other non-scientific aspects of effective selling.  But we don’t allow every salesperson to follow their own path, in their own way.

If it’s not defending a “no process” philosophy with the stifle creativity argument, it’s:

• “It’s more work for the reps.”
• “Every customer is different so a standard process won’t work.”
• “Things change too quickly for a standard process.”
• “My reps won’t follow one.”
• “My reps don’t need one.”
• “When I was a carried a bag, I was successful and I didn’t follow a process.”
• “All my reps need is some cold-calling training.”
• “Selling is an art and not a science.  Leave process to the engineers.”
• “They’re too rigid.”

Of all the excuses we regularly hear, none of them is valid.  Not a single one.

So, to you sales leaders who struggle to make your numbers and hop from job to job every 19 months or so: ask yourself why you’re ignoring the facts and still not doing the single most important thing that will enable you and your team to be more effective.

As far as I’m concerned, I’ve heard enough excuses.

Sales training revenue. Sales training revenue is off across the board, ranging from a 10% decline in previously rapidly growing companies, to 60% or more in established companies that had modest growth in previous years. We suspect that companies are just unwilling to admit a greater than 60% incline. However, we believe some companies are off far more than that.

Sales training volume. The volume of sales training, versus the revenue generated, is a different story. A very common complaint is the price pressure realized by sales training companies that are actually selling products/services in the marketplace.  Some training companies have reported to us that while the number of total courses they have delivered has not declined sharply, fees have become significantly depressed. These companies report that they are retaining clients and even acquiring new clients, but with a significant sacrifice in margins. The decreases result from price and fee cuts to retain business rather than a lack of customers. We estimate that approximately 30% to 40% of training companies fall into this category. The rest of the companies, we believe, have just seen opportunities as well prices decline—a very risky combination.

The industry. ES Research Group, Inc. estimates that in 2009 the direct B2B sales training spend in the U.S. (including consulting and methodology work) is $US 5.5 billion, with $3.8 billion attributable to internal corporate resources. That leaves the outsourced/third-party spend at $1.7 billion or 30% of the total, down 44%.  The overall training spend is shrinking and third-party sales trainers are getting less of the total investment.

Preserving profitability. A small but growing number of companies have figured out a way to preserve profitability in a period of revenue decline. They are leveraging new technologies to deliver their content and in addition provide, through sales-enablement technology, tools that will help salespeople be more effective by more efficiently managing their sales processes.  More and more companies (and individual trainers) are delivering some or all of their course material as recorded sessions over the web, interspersed with occasional, live, web-based sessions. This allows them to substantially reduce instructor costs, as well as reduce customer costs for travel. Furthermore, although training virtually—at the  students’ convenience—may lengthen the elapsed calendar time required for training, it will have low impact on the salesrep/students’ work schedule and travel budget.  ESR believes that this mode of training will reduce delivery costs and thus position it well in this still depressed economy.  This mode is built to last. Supporting technology is sound, and has been proven again and again to offer a high ROI for those companies who have been training their salespeople this way.  It took the high cost of live, ILT (instructor-led training) prpogram delivery during a declining economy to further stimulate its adoption.

Conclusions: There is simply not enough sales training going on.  And, as I pointed out above, it is declining.

Buyers of sales training must begin to explore, at the least, blended learning approaches for training their salespeople as well as reinforcing that training.  Understand your requirements, find the right partner, and embark on a long-term approach to sales performance improvement.

Sales trainers have a choice: face the music or face the growing consequences.  Whether you’re a one-person shop or a global provider, you must have a strategic, funded plan to leverage technology for learning and selling support for your clients.  If you don’t have one, you’re risking being irrelevant to the changing face, age and learning preferences of increasingly diverse sales teams.  And sticking your head in the sand doesn’t work.  I’ve tried it.

Photo credit: © Geo Martinez – Fotolia.com