Posted on January 18th, 2010 by Dave Stein
For those of you new to this blog, my firm, ES Research Group, evaluates sales training companies. We deliver our findings in the form of reports, which we sell on our website, and through consultations with companies evaluating sales training providers.
First a bit of background.
For us, gathering data about sales training companies falls into seven [...]
Filed under: Account Management, Buyers, Industry Analyst, Methodology, RFP, Sales Training Companies | No Comments »
Posted on December 16th, 2008 by Dave Stein
When I worked coaching sales teams I generally took a tough, if not black and white, position on responding to blind RFPs. My clients heard me say again and again, “Follow conventional wisdom: If you didn’t write it, your competitor probably did. Let’s come up with more productive ways to spend your time.”
(Now I’m on [...]
Filed under: Book Recommendation, Buyers, Economy, Marketing, Methodology, Pipeline, Research | 5 Comments »
Posted on October 29th, 2008 by Dave Stein
If you are not selling in a tightly-controlled, RFP-driven sales environment, you might want to consider this collaborative approach for getting your proposals approved. Proposal collaboration really makes sense now, during these unsure economic times. It provides the customer with the ability to directly control the content of your proposal as well as the price.
First, some background.
I’ve [...]
Filed under: Buyers, Economy, Opportunity Management, Professionalism, Relationships | 1 Comment »
Posted on August 11th, 2008 by Dave Stein
I heard on the news this evening that Boeing may decide to no-bid on the $35 billion U.S. Airforce tanker opportunity.
AviationWeek reported that “Word that Boeing is strongly considering a ‘no bid’ position for the next round of the U.S. Air Force refueling tanker competition is spreading only two days after the Pentagon released the [...]
Filed under: Big Wins, Competition, Sales Strategy | 3 Comments »
Posted on July 7th, 2008 by Dave Stein
I want to share with you some more of my recent experience and related opinions regarding sales training vendors and RFPs.* (See my May 23rd post about RFPs. If you haven’t read it and are interested in how sales training vendors—arguably world-class experts in managing RFP response strategies—reacted to one RFP, you should.)
Before I go into where [...]
Filed under: Professionalism, Sales Training Companies | No Comments »
Posted on June 4th, 2008 by Dave Stein
White papers serve a function: to position a vendor’s assessment of opportunities or challenges faced by their target market and serve up that vendor’s products or services as solutions. In most cases, white papers are marketing documents rather than the unbiased analyses they appear to be. (There are exceptions, including the white paper recently published [...]
Filed under: Sales Training Companies | No Comments »
Posted on May 23rd, 2008 by Dave Stein
Among other things, we work with companies in facilitating an understanding of their own sales performance improvement requirements as well as guiding them through the sales training vendor selection process where appropriate.
One client of ours issued RFPs to a long list of six sales training vendors. The RFP included significant sales process work, sales training [...]
Filed under: Sales Training Companies | 3 Comments »
