Dealmaker Genius. There Are No Excuses Anymore.

Prior 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

Back 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 [...]

I'm Presenting At The Sales 2.0 Conference In Boston. Join Me.

Update: This conference is sold out.
I’m delighted to be both presenting and participating in a panel discussion at the Sales 2.0 Conference in Boston on May 21st.
Using recent research from ESR’s Sales Training Vendor Guide, I’ll talk specifically about technology-enabled learning—how technology is changing learning and why today, effective sales learning requires technology.
I’ve not been [...]

ESR's Survey On Social Media Use in B2B Selling

With the assistance of The TAS Group, ESR recently surveyed nearly 400 users of the following technologies to determine the effects that these new technologies in helping them win B2B sales opportunities:

Jigsaw;
LinkedIn;
Twitter;
Plaxo;
Facebook;
Hoover’s or OneSource.

The pace of technology development today is dizzying. It seems as though a new sales-related technology appears daily. The question is, do [...]

You Won't Believe What's New In Sales Training!

For those of you who follow the ups and downs, ins and outs of the sales training industry, here is the latest, as of today, April 1, 2009:

Miller Heiman and furniture manufacturer Herman Miller have announced a merger.  The new business, to be called Herman Miller Heiman, will be offering a new, upgraded version of [...]

Here's What's Going On

ESR 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 hard [...]

Sales 2.0: Does It Enable Effective Selling Or Is It Yet Another Decoy?

As ESR continues to work with our clients, observe salespeople and research sales effectiveness, we’re frustrated and concerned with the increasing hype around Sales 2.0.
Is Sales 2.0 real?  Yes.  Are Sales 2.0 applications actually helping salespeople to win business? Yes.  There is no question about that.  But we believe in numbers significantly less than some [...]

Sales Training And Travel Budget Cuts

In my post yesterday I wrote about how sales training companies are faring during this economic crisis.  Some are doing well.  Others less so.
An area of considerable concern to those companies that are investing in sales performance improvement is the cost of travel.  This is yet another area where the traditional hotel conference room training [...]

ESR's 2008 Sales Training Arena

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 [...]

Early Failure is Better Than Late Failure

Donal Daly, CEO of The TAS Group, wrote a great post (Early failure is better than late failure) on his company’s blog that is more than worthy of your consideration. (Disclosure: The TAS Group is a subscriber to ESR’s research.)
In the post Donal discusses the not-often-enough-overcome challenge of effective qualification.  From the post:
When budgets are [...]