Posted on December 5th, 2008 by Dave Stein
Each year ESR publishes its annual Sales Training Vendor Guide.
The 2008 Guide, which was published last December, compares and contrasts 19 leading sales training providers across many different capabilities such as depth and breadth of offering, program effectiveness, educational design, available customization, post-program reinforcement, learning technology support and measurement.
Although the 2008 Guide came in at [...]
Filed under: Buyers, Economy, Industry Analyst, Measurement, Methodology, Research, Sales Training Companies, Technology | No Comments »
Posted on September 5th, 2008 by Dave Stein
This blog will not become a platform for me to attack individuals (or companies, for that matter), even when they are dead wrong. But everyone has a limit. I reached mine today. I’m genuinely looking for your opinion on how to handle the situation I’m about to describe.
I spend a lot of time learning, reading, thinking, pondering, [...]
Filed under: Dave Stein, Methodology, Professionalism, Sales Training Companies, sales process, sales training | 12 Comments »
Posted on August 8th, 2008 by Dave Stein
I recently noticed a schedule of public training classes to be run by SPI (Sales Performance International). I wrote an email to Tim Sullivan, a director at the company. Tim is a well-respected thought leader in the sales performance improvement industry (and writes the Selling Geek blog, which is on my illumio feed list).
My email to [...]
Filed under: Measurement, Research, Sales Training Companies | 1 Comment »
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 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 »
Posted on May 16th, 2008 by Dave Stein
Yesterday I interviewed Tom Roth (CEO) and Ed Emde (SVP) from Wilson Learning as part of my sales thought-leader podcast series. (Click the tab at the top of the page to see the podcasts that we’ve already published. They’re free!)
Every reputable sales trainer and training firm knows that a stand-alone training event doesn’t deliver in significant, long-term, sustainable value. Tom quoted a study [...]
Filed under: Measurement, Sales Training Companies | No Comments »
Posted on May 13th, 2008 by Dave Stein
I get calls periodically from private equity fund managers and other investment bankers about the demographics of the sales training industry. Journalists I speak with are interested in it as well.
What’s so noteworthy? The degree of fragmentation of the sales training industry. It’s certainly not the most fragmented. Law firms are considerably more so, for [...]
Filed under: Sales Training Companies | No Comments »
Posted on May 9th, 2008 by Dave Stein
Before I go any further, let me again state that there are a lot of effective, high value, ethical sales training companies out there. They have long lists of customers who have managed to dramatically improve their teams’ sales performance.
Stealing
Let me dig a bit into a point I made in Part 1—the fact that some [...]
Filed under: Sales Training Companies | No Comments »
Posted on May 5th, 2008 by Dave Stein
I’ve been on all sides of the sales training business:
Class participant as a sales rep—many different programs over numbers of years;
Buyer of sales training as a VP of sales;
Buyer of sales management training;
Inhouse sales trainer—my own content as well as a reseller for another company;
Outsourced sales trainer—again, my own content as well as a reseller [...]
Filed under: Methodology, Sales Training Companies | 6 Comments »
Posted on April 21st, 2008 by Dave Stein
I was on the phone today with an associate from a private equity firm.
He found ESR on the web and was interested in our opinion on a number of topics
as a foundation for his firm acquiring one or more sales training companies. He
asked how sales training companies were generally doing during this
recession. He pondered how a services-based company could weather these types
of [...]
Filed under: Methodology, Sales Training Companies | 6 Comments »
