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?
• Where 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

Sales trainers and sales training firms have a big challenge over the next year:  many customer training budgets have shrunk or been eliminated entirely; the trainers’ own revenues are significantly down—there has been plenty of downsizing; there are big changes in customer buying patterns; and sales training itself, due to advances in technology, is going through some of the biggest changes since the first commercially available recordings of sales trainers were produced.

Through our work with both the buy- and sell-sides of sales performance improvement and training solutions, these vendor-centric, short-term obstacles must be overcome for the industry to regain its foothold and start delivering real business value to a much more skeptical and savvy buyer.

1. More often than not, sales training is reactive on the part of buyers.  How can a sales training firm convince their customer that a funded, strategic approach is the way to go, not a two-day, check-the-box event at a Newark Airport Holiday Inn conference room?  Hint:  If the trainer doesn’t, they’ll put some cash in their pocket now, but contribute to the further demise of the sales training industry going forward.
   

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2. Some large percentage of salesreps (one in four) just aren’t suited for the job of selling.  Unfortunately, if you spend a lot of money training C players, they’ll still be C players.  With that in mind, are sales trainers willing to put a stake in the ground telling their customers that training C players is a waste of time and money?
   

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3. Many training companies really don’t understand their customers’ training requirements.  Any discovery they do is perfunctory.  They don’t take the time or have the experience to understand the deeper issues—some that their customers’ sales leaders may not even be aware of.   (An example would be the degree of business and financial knowledge necessary to sell certain products and services.  If the trainer doesn’t understand how important that may be to the client, how will that become part of the curriculum?)   As a result of insufficient discovery, too many trainers “customize” only by making a few changes in their course materials—Powerpoint for many—and next year wonder why the client has engaged with someone else.
   

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4. The customer doesn’t believe in process, asserting that any process is too restrictive.  (Any process can be too restrictive.  The best trainers build flexibility into their process models for individual and team creativity—the art of selling. )  The most effective sales training is the result of salesreps learning to, and practicing employing, a process.  If there is no process to train to, training is close to useless because the skills taught are disconnected from other skills and serve to provide only a tactical boost to performance in one small area.
   

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5. No measurement systems have been put in place.  If a pragmatic measurement system is installed, metrics will provide critical, relevant and timely information to sales management (before it’s too late).  Measuring only with lagging indicators (performance last month, quarter, year) doesn’t help a sales leader determine whether his people are doing the right things now to win business.  Few sales trainers really understand sales performance measurement and therefore don’t work on convincing their clients to adopt measurement as a required business process.  When companies do have a performance improvement measurement system in place, and the vendor has created value, new proposals for further improvement are welcomed by the customer.
   

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6. Dependence by both buyers and sellers only on traditional, live, instructor-led training.  The degree of heterogeneity within sales teams require sales leaders and trainers alike to move away from the old one-size-fits-all approach.  There should always be some live component of most training for outside sales reps.  Getting in front of customers is what they do for a living.  But stuffing 25 people in a room who come from different generations, have vast differences in experience, learn differently, and may come from different cultures is like dumping a smorgasbord table of delicious and varied food into a Cuisinart.  If you’re a sales trainer and you aren’t, at a minimum, already somewhat down the road re-engineering your content for an on-demand, self-paced, individualized delivery platform, you’re late.
   

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7. Learning reinforcement and coaching is often sacrificed.  Research proves that coaching is often the number one success factor in sustainable behavioral change, but sales trainers are often quick to give up the fight when customers balk at reinforcement costs in their proposals.
   

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8. The customers’ belief and hope that tips and tricks alone will get the job done.  They don’t and they won’t.
   

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If you’re a sales trainer and you’re thinking about waiting until the situation gets better—until it returns to normal, guess what?  This IS the new normal.

If you’re a buyer of sales training, understand that your favorite trainer may be out of business next month or be acquired by someone you may not like at all.  Or maybe you’ve made the right decision and they’re going to be driving unprecedented levels of customer value.  Speak with your trainer about these issues.  Make sure you’re comfortable with what they are doing about them.  The need the right answers and they need a plan.

Photo Credit: Igor Karon – Fotolia.com

Tom is a 20-year veteran of the sales methodology and training industry, with a diverse set of global experience crossing sales (direct, indirect and inside), channel management, marketing, SFA/CRM, consulting, finance, legal, training, systems and operations.   He is currently General Manager of Channels at Force Management, LLC.  He’s got quite a background including full or part-time roles with Channel Enablers Pty Ltd., Think! Inc., OnTarget Inc./Siebel Sales Methodology Experts, and Miller Heiman, Inc., where Tom was President, North America.

Over the course of a few days in Orlando, Tom and I compared notes on a number of important issues germane to sales trainers, sales training companies, and buyers of sales training.  The result is this “discussion” I’ve reconstructed with Tom’s help.

Dave Stein: On the subject of content and IP (Intellectual Property) licensing fees… I know you have worked on a large number of methodology licensing deals, especially while you were at OnTarget/Siebel. Do you think those deals were good for customers and for the training companies?

Tom Martin: A lot of training firms started to do license deals because customers asked for them without understanding the impact of some of their decisions. For example, most training firm standard licensing wording does not benefit the customer if they want to seamlessly integrate IP from multiple suppliers.   License deals could become better deals for both the seller and buyer by expanding their thinking beyond simply price, volume and terms length.

DS: Almost every corporation we’ve worked with has an amalgam of methodologies, processes, terminology, tools, and coursework from multiple vendors.  I suspect, according to the strict licensing wording in many vendors’ contracts, these companies are in violation of some contracts.

While we were talking after my keynote speech at the SMT conference you commented about how many veterans of the high-tech world don’t pay much attention to most sales training because they say they’ve heard it all before in a prior training class and have even heard the same “war stories” used by different training firms.

TM: To some extent, that’s true. Many training firms were founded by alumni of other firms and their courses often have substantial similarity to each other, while legally being new copyrightable works.  Some trainers who have “adopted” others’ approaches would say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

DS: Of course if you’ve had your content pirated, as I have, you might not be in such a benevolent state-of-mind. I’ve got a folder with emails from vendors who accuse others of stealing their stuff.  I know it goes on.  More often that the general public knows or cares about.

TM: There are some great new elements, often from lesser known firms, but you and I agree that many (but not all) of the 20-year old selling concepts are still valuable to some salespeople.

DS: That’s why I founded ESR—to end the destructive cycle of selecting the wrong sales training companies for the wrong reasons.

TM: I should also mention that what I see differentiating competing training firms most often is not their core content but their implementation approaches – these vary far more widely.

DS: Some very successful sales leaders we’ve worked with don’t worry much about which sales methodology they use.  They’re only focused on compliance, measurement, and ongoing process improvement.

TM: Then there is the all-to-common situation where new training initiatives are commenced by a VP Sales new in their job. Someone who wants to bring in “their” language and so they often force 200 people to learn something new as opposed to the VP learning something different—or being open to finding a way to blend the two.

DS: We see that a fair amount ourselves.  When you think about the average tenure of a sales VP being less than two years, there may be a link here, or I should say, maybe a link needs to be broken.  Too many sales training buyers pick a vendor based only upon comfort, past experience, whoever is “hot,” etc.  It happens all the time

We also talked 2 weeks ago about how training firms can make it difficult for a past client to integrate their methodology with complementary methodologies from other firms.  With the DealMaker Partner Network and WhiteSprings helping customers address this to some extent do you see a shift coming in the market?

TM: I could make the analogy between the cell phone market and training – now we’re able to keep the same phone number when we change carriers and in some cases we can take a phone from one carrier to another—all because consumers demanded more power in the relationship.  I expect more and more mid-sized firms to be demanding licensing rights around derivative works and the ability to integrate multiple methodologies without being held hostage because their contract wasn’t set up with those rights.  The largest firms have been doing this for the past five years so I think it will trickle down to smaller and smaller firms until it is a generally accepted standard in the market.  Some training firms will fight this but it’s the right thing to do for clients.

DS: Yes, I think some of these restrictions are very one-sided—the vendor’s side. Some vendors collect big licensing fees each year for delivering no new value.  Someone bought their stuff ten years ago, signed an agreement and they’re stuck.  Some of ESR’s work with training and methodology buyers raises brings this issue into the light of day.  We want vendors to make a profit and continue to invest in new products and services.  On the other hand, there has to be value for the buyers’ investments.  Paying royalties on the use of an irrelevant, decade-old training manual, a term, a word, or an outdated form doesn’t make sense from their perspective.  Just today a large buyer of sales training invested in ESR’s Sales Training Vendor Guide as a first step in firing their current, well-known provider for precisely this reason.

What do you see out there with respect to integrating methodologies, Tom?

TM: There are some training firms that do a nice job as “methodology integrators” but I think too many customers allow themselves to be forced to treat every set of training IP as its own silo, which ends up minimizing the effectiveness of their sales people and especially their sales managers.  The sales manager does a deal review and has to pull out pages with all the Opportunity Management  methodology information, then another set of pages for the Negotiation element, then more pages about the Questioning program from a different vendor, and then when they are done they create a Sales Call Plan from a different vendor that is less useful because it doesn’t have all the right Opportunity Management and negotiation words—and can’t because no one has the legal right to create that amalgamation and it’s too much legal hassle to ask for it.

The result is that sales managers are burdened with 3-inch-thick, 3-ring binders that they rarely pick up because they’re simply not usable. What is more “sales-consumable,” in the words of Force Management’s Grant Wilson, is being able to manage your sales force with no more than 10 well-designed pages. I first saw the 10-page sales manager playbook when I attended Force Management’s “Command of the Plan” training and wished I could go back 10 years in time—I didn’t enjoy life as a front-line sales manager because I had a stack of 3-ring binders and wonder how much life would have changed with the elegant simplicity of a 10-page manager playbook.

Photo: © RTimages – Fotolia.com

The result this time was Geoffrey’s fine piece (PDF, with permission) that was just published in Selling Power about how my firm, ES Research Group, assisted a client through a sales training vendor selection process.  (For those interested in this important topic, John Esposito, VP of Sales of AMICAS, another ESR client, will be keynoting at the upcoming ASTD Virtual Sales Training Conference.  He’ll be talking about his company’s journey through that process.)

I’m not only pleased about the coverage.  I’m delighted that companies have been coming to ESR to provide resources and guidance for something that few companies get right—selecting a sales training company.  From those engagements we’ve got other case studies to share.  We’ll be doing that over time.

It’s not easy for sales leaders to successfully evaluate and choose a long-term sales performance improvement partner.  They have too little time, too few resources, too much pressure to do it quickly, and many just don’t have the experience or knowledge of how to manage a process such as this.  And, when there are potentially dozens of what would seem like viable alternatives, including trainers that aren’t well-known, the challenge multiplies in size and complexity.  That’s why buyers of sales training take short-cuts and wind up with little or nothing in return for their investment of time and money in training.

On the other side of the equation, sales trainers are loathe to respond to RFPs.  I understand that.  I really do.  As we all know, most RFPs are are driven by a vendor who got in there first, so everyone else is at a severe disadvantage.  Plus, it takes work to respond to an RFP.  Few sales training companies have resources available to respond to them.

Where ESR is involved, however, we assure all participating vendors that 1) there is a real opportunity, 2) it is adequately funded, 3) it has executive sponsorship, 4) the requirements have not been influenced by any vendor, 5) they stand an even chance of winning out of the gate, and 6) they will have an opportunity to present their unique value, experience and vision of a solution to the client.  Vendors serious about earning a client’s business appreciate this and assist in the process by providing the answers our clients need.

The good news for vendors in not only this case, but others in which ESR was involved, is the vendor winds up being selected because they have the highest chance of being successful meeting the client’s requirements, not because they outsold the competition or influenced the buying criteria to meet their unique strengths.  The vendors who are selected through the process highlighted in this article are delighted with the outcome.  So are their clients.

In any case, I hope this two-page story provides some value for you.  Thanks to Gerhard Gschwandtner, founder and publisher of Selling Power, for his help in bringing this case study to you.