What Kind of Sales Training is Best?

A reader asked this question about sales training:

"With your experience in sales management, who do you consider to be the best sales training company?  (Miller-Heiman, etc.)  I want to think downfield about the best company to partner with as I'm building my sales team."
                                                                                                            John Siwgard

There is not a straightforward answer to this question, John. The sales training your company needs depends on many considerations. I'm not an expert at all the different sales training methodologies out there (however, I do know people who are such experts). So, take my references to specific companies with a grain of salt. Here are just a few of the things you should keep in mind:

• The type of decision maker
  Value propositions for engineers or scientists are different from value propositions for salespeople or business owners. Selling requires that you thoroughly understand the language your buyer uses and the environment they live in.
• The number of departments your products and services affect
  Some environments require your sales process to deal with the perspectives of many individuals within the customer's business. The more parties involved, the more complex and difficult it is to sell successfully.
• The level of your decision maker
  Some types of markets require a high-level executive selling skill. Others require more of an application selling skill. Others, a transactional selling skill. Using a methodology aimed at selling to top executives (e.g., "Selling to VITO," or IMPAX) will likely backfire if your buyer is a project engineer. The reverse is also true. 
• Transactions vs relationships
  Are you selling a relationship that will be valuable to the customer over time, or does your offer lend itself more to a transaction, where once it's over, it's over? Even within complex commercial environments, some sales training programs are more oriented to projects or transactions (SPIN and Solution Selling), others to managing complex relationships (IMPAX).
• The receptivity of your market
  Selling something the market recognizes a need for is an entirely different problem fromtrying to sell something people do not understand the value. Very different skills are required of salespeople in these two extremes. Need creation selling is different from need fulfillment selling. Sometimes, what is needed is NOT sales training, but a visit to the lead generation or the product-development department instead.
• The skill level of your salespeople
  Do your salespeople need the foundational ABCs, or just a bit of brush up on certain skills? Or do they just need need field coaching for complex deals?
• Environment and systems
  Does your environment require salespeople to do all of their own prospecting, nurturing, qualifying, needs assessment, demonstration, proposing, closing, and follow-up, or can many of those tasks be provided by others? The skills required are vastly different (as are the management problems) in those different environments. Salespeople with a ton of priorities may need more time and territory management skills to make sure they are organized.

Once you have your sales process defined properly, you are in a much better position to articulate exactly what your salespeople must be able to do differently than they do now. For example, you might decide that rather than sales training, they may need a negotition strategy. What ever the case, a specific set of requirements enables you to go shopping for what you need much more effectively. Further, a proper process definition allows you to identify how you will know whether the salespeople are really more effective after the training has been completed.

Once your requirements are better defined, you can begin comparing not only the methodologies of the various companies, but their means of engaging, supporting, and coaching your people as well.

The training business is very similar across most industries: Corporations know how to buy training, training companies know how to sell it, so money changes hands, and training is provided, but not much else changes. This is because companies have failed to understand how to manage their processes effectively.

It is much more important (and difficult) to be able to make a difference, a business result. Doing so requires corporations to better understand their own environments first. A process approach will help you get there.

Michael J Webb
March 2, 2006

Comments

[Nigel Edelshain]

Michael,

Well said! I totally agree with your analysis.

Companies need to get away from thinking about "what training we should have at our next annual sales meeting" and get into the process of affecting REAL change.

Great point.

Nigel

[ccoyne]

Very, very true. I think this article about sales training from Capstone Training Specialties addresses this quite well. I recommend it if you have a minute.
http://www.capstonetraining.com/blog/tabid/7559/bid/1277/Sales-Training-is-a-Scalpel-Start-with-a-Stethoscope.aspx

[Greg Alexander]

Michael,

I have recently come into contact with a company who I feel has the best way to determine the right sales methodology company to select. EsResearch and its CEO Dave Stein have the knowledge and experience I think your readers would find valuable.

Cheers.