ESR encourages sales managers to approach training for inside sales representatives just as seriously as they would approach training for their most valuable outside sales (or field sales) representatives.

Why? This is because the methods, operations and aptitudes of inside sales professionals are increasingly driving sales productivity. Today, inside sales representatives do more than find leads for others to pursue. They also qualify leads for themselves or others to pursue. Increasingly, inside sales representatives are pursuing opportunities to the negotiation and closing stages.

Yet, many organizations invest far less in their inside sales training than they do in training their star field representatives. Too many sales managers regard inside sales training as “basic” training. They staff their inside sales organizations with young people fresh out of college, and they still view inside sales solely as a support structure for sales people in the field. For many companies, this is a costly mistake. (Post continued below.)

Listen in to our expert panel on Wednesday, February 8, 2012.

It’s unscripted and unrehearsed. No Powerpoints, pitches, promotions, or positioning.

What Sales Management Needs to Know Today About Inside Sales and Cold Calling

Wednesday, February 8, 2012 – 12:00 ET / 9:00 PT / 1800 GMT

Panelists:

Gary Walker, EVP Channel Sales & Operations, CustomerCentric Selling Ron LaVine, Principal, Accelerated Sales Training Sharon Daniels, CEO, AchieveGlobal Leigh Hooker, COO, Miller Heiman

We believe that sales managers who can shift their organizations NOW to value inside sales will be able to get out ahead of the competition. It’s time to get serious about training for inside sales, for these reasons:

1. The wall between inside and outside sales isn’t appropriate and is beginning to break down. Outside (or field) sales representatives are working remotely from their homes, hotels and/or shared office suites. They are using on-line demos, chat, email, web-based video, social media, and yes, phone calls, to cover more accounts in less time. Are they operating as inside sales representatives at those times? Sure. Or, more likely, the distinction between outside and inside sales is becoming less useful. Today, all sales representatives are integral to closing sales.The frequency of the classic in-person sales call has decreased. Customers everywhere increasingly prefer virtual interactions with sellers. Trend data reveal that sales organizations are shifting resources from outside to inside sales. Inside sales growth is 30% faster than their outside sales counterparts.¹ The number of Inside Sales departments is projected to grow from 800,000, in 2009, to over 2 million in 2013.²
   

   ---

2. Inside Sales representatives are negotiating and closing deals. Further blurring the lines, more inside representatives are working alongside outside representatives on client visits or sales presentations. Inside sales departments are closing more deals and becoming independent revenue producers for their companies. It’s becoming difficult to distinguish between inside sales and outside sales. Perhaps a better term for inside sales would be “virtual sales,” which nearly all salespeople engage in when they use technology to communicate with their customers and prospects.
   

   ---

3. Inside sales representatives are more likely to adopt the practices of what we have been calling Sales 2.0. These include using analytical data, performance metrics, and ROI measures to drive sales decisions and activity. Inside sales people tend to have a better grasp of tools and analytics. A recent study of more than 600 companies noted that, for the first time, a majority 51 percent of firms now track the ROI of their marketing campaigns. Marketing campaigns are becoming much more closely aligned with sales objectives.³
   

   ---

4. Companies are poaching inside sales representatives. Increasingly, companies are hiring experienced inside sales representatives away from their competitors. This represents a departure from the traditional route of hiring new college graduates or entry-level sales people to fill inside sales positions. We believe this trend will continue.
   

   ---

What should inside sales training look like?

Like training for outside sales, training for inside sales must connect with your go-to-market strategy. Training doesn’t set that strategy. Instead, training must reinforce the specific skills needs to execute your strategy.

The first question is ask is whether or not it still relevant to distinguish between inside and outside sales. Does the wall between inside sales and outside sales help execute your go-to-market strategy? Even if the answer is yes, you will examine and redefine the role of your inside sales organization as you tailor training to the your go-t0-market strategy. For example, to what degree are you shifting revenue responsibility from field to inside sales?

This is an opportunity to capitalize on the strengths of inside sales. If you decide that leveraging data is a key component of your strategy, inside sales representatives already have an advantage in data gathering and analysis. Inside sales could mine insights from the deals you are winning and losing. Their training would sharpen not only their ability to specifically recommend new tactics based on their research, like targeting a specific industry vertical.

One warning, though. As with everything else in business, moving from a field to an inside sales approach without an comprehensive and objective assessment of your unique situation and a plan is a big mistake.  We’ve seen companies, in a mad dash to reduce expenses, eliminate significant percentages of their field organizations, replacing those headcounts with inside sales reps. Unfortunately their customers needed and wanted experienced, live people representing alternatives from different providers. That’s a classic example of ready, fire, aim.

Sources:

1. Josiane Feigon. Download Josiane’s Inside Sales Trends for more of her perspective and read my interview with her here.
2. SKKU/MIT Remote Sales Industry Research Study (2009)
3. CSO Insights, 2011 Telemarketing/Inside Sales Optimization Report

And Trish Bertuzzi, The Bridge Group

Photo: www.OnPath.com

2011 Telemarketing/Inside Sales Optimization Report

I promised to share with you who ESR considers sales training industry leaders.

A few points to consider:

• As you are probably aware, ESR’s Research Methodology enables our research team to produce very accurate profiles and evaluations of the sales training providers that we cover.  We look at many more characteristics than are listed in the “category” column below, going through numerous briefings, checking customer references, and tapping into our significant community of sales training buyers and experts. Through this formal research, ESR provides a unique perspective and authoritative advice to corporations evaluating sales training company alternatives.
  

  ---

• I’m only highlighting a partial list of names for each category.  Apologies to those companies that weren’t included in categories where they are strong.
  

  ---

• If you are looking to engage with a sales training company/consulting firm, we strongly suggest you not just take this list and start calling these companies.  Statistically, that’s a big mistake for a lot of reasons.  One reason is the very company you think meets your requirements in one area, may fall dismally short in another. We see it all the time.  Selecting the right sales performance improvement partner is about understanding your own prioritized requirements and matching them against the capabilities of a number of potential providers, balancing strengths with inevitable challenges, trade-offs, and risks. For more information, enter your name and email, then download this ebook:  The Seven Sales Training Pitfalls and Seven Solutions for Sustained Success.

  If you are currently looking for a sales training partner, have a budget, are a decision-maker (or lead an evaluation team), and haven’t already made up your mind, give me a call. I’d be happy to walk you through what you have to do NOT to become yet another failed sales training initiative statistic. And we’re happy to evaluate, on your behalf, companies not included among those we cover.

  ---

• Are there other sales training companies that are strong (or perhaps stronger) in these categories than those listed?  Sure.  Some aren’t listed because they haven’t been put through ESR’s vigorous evaluation process.  If you are interested in which other providers fall into each category, contact us at ESR.
  

  ---

© 2012 — ES Research Group, Inc. — All Rights Reserved.

* Although ESR’s evaluations of these firms are in progress, analyst briefings have enabled us to determine they are among the leaders in these areas.

Click on the link for ESR’s Sales Training Profiles & Evaluations of these and other providers.

It was an hour full of valuable intelligence and insight for sales training companies and sales trainers in corporate L&D organizations.

Here are some of the points I made during the event. First, a quick review of 2011. (A look at 2012 and beyond will follow in Part 2.)

• Sales training spend was up during the first half of 2011, then down during the second.
  

  ---

• 63% of companies ESR surveyed during 2011 spend less than $3,000 per sales rep per year.
  

  ---

• More and more companies cut back on travel, requiring virtual sales training alternatives.
  

  ---

• We saw some strategic acquisitions:
• Mercuri International acquired the business simulation company, Celemi.
• Miller Heiman acquired channel management specialists Channel Enablers.
• The TAS Group acquired sales performance improvement provider InfoMentis.
  

  ---

• We found larger sales training companies going broader in solution scope, adding capabilities in many areas, such as ROI, business acumen, talent management and more.
  

  ---

• Many smaller sales training providers consolidated their offerings going more niche.  Smart move during a challenging economy.
  

  ---

• In general, our opinion that sales training companies make lousy marketers was proven yet again.  There are notable exceptions, such as Miller Heiman, Richardson, and RAIN Group.
  

  ---

• Training companies need sales leads as much as companies in any other sector.
  

  ---

• During 2011, ESR saw increased demand for process and sales training content in coaching (for sales management) and selling to the corporate procurement function.
  

  ---

• Our sales training buyer community still has a tough time differentiating one sales training provider from another. (That’s why they come to ESR.)
  

  ---

• Here is what generated some buzz during 2011:
• Jeffrey Gitomer is writing the ASTD Sales Training Drivers blog.
• Tom Searcy, author of RFPs Suck, took over Geoffrey James’s blog (formerly Sales Machine) and is now writing for CBS.
• Geoffrey James, who recently published How to Say It: Business to Business Selling: Power Words and Strategies from the World’s Top Sales Experts, now writes for Inc.com.
• A few good books were published, including The Challenger Sale.
• The TAS Group released their Dealmaker Index.
• Some sales experts invested time and effort in social media—CustomerThink, Focus.com, Quora, LinkedIn Groups, and Twitter among others. The question is, will it pay off?

Be sure to catch Part 2, where I will share with you which companies ESR believes are leaders in numbers of different areas. Don’t want to miss it? Then subscribe to this blog:

Subscribe in a reader

Finally, join me this Wednesday, January 18, when I’m a guest for The TAS Group Webinar: The Evolution of Sales—2012 Vision.

Photo source: Endostock/Fotolia.com

I bought the plane in 1995 after Datalogix International, a company where I was a principal, went public. I flew nearly 2,000 hours in the plane with trips to Florida, Atlanta, Chicago, Canada, Lake of the Ozarks, and many dozens of airports up and down the East Coast. I made 20 trips down the “Hudson River Corridor” at 900 feet, which always included a loop around the Statue of Liberty at 500 feet. (Check out this video from my plane.) I took a lot of people, especially kids, for their first plane ride. My special flights around Martha’s Vineyard were a treat in return for donations to some of our local charities.

Everyone seems to want to know why I sold the plane.  Here are a few reasons: First, I wasn’t flying enough, and that’s dangerous.  See below. Second, the cost of flying has skyrocketed in the past five years. Fuel is more than $6.00 per gallon, and at 13 gallons per hour, that adds up.  And since my plane was 34 years old, there was always something that needed repair or replacement.  There are no cheap repairs on an airplane. Third, I’m not comfortable burning up fuel tanks full of 100-octane leaded gasoline just to have some fun. It’s a carbon footprint issue for me.

From the time I started flying in 1994, I learned a lot. And not just about piloting an airplane. I learned that:

• Practice makes perfect. Flying on instruments in the rain, at night, into an airport you’ve never visited before takes a lot of skill. There is no on-the-job training here. If you aren’t on top of your instrument flying skills, you’re toast.
  

  ---

• Rules are made to be followed. FAA regulations are numerous, serious, detailed, and designed to reduce the many risks associated with flying. Break one, and you have taken the first step to a potentially disastrous situation.  A few times I inadvertently broke the rules and each time, could have easily wound up in a dangerous situation. I’m happy to expand on this if anyone is interested.
  

  ---

• You have to be true to yourself. Sounds corny, but it isn’t at all. 99% of what pilots do is self-policed. As just one example, the FAA does not check that you’ve done six instrument approaches in the prior six months when you file a instrument flight plan. If you haven’t, you’re at serious risk, and you have only the person in the mirror to tell you not to do it. It’s sobering to have that degree of responsibility. By the way, few pilots I know cheat the system.  Just read through the NTSB (National Transportation Safety Board) accident reports as I did every month, and you’ll see that pilot error is a significant factor in most private plane accidents, and those errors are often the result of breaking the rules.
  

  ---

• The brain is capable of so much more than we give it credit for. I once read that a lone pilot, flying a challenging instrument approach, expends seven times the mental effort of a surgeon during an operation.  I don’t know whether that’s true, but one of the reasons I’ve sold my plane is that I no longer fly enough to keep that razor-sharp edge.
  

  ---

• Process is what it’s all about. We use procedures, checklists, and innumerable other routines. If you don’t like to use that stuff, you shouldn’t fly.
  

  ---

• Subjectivity and emotion can be very dangerous.  We know from accident reports that pilots can lose situational awareness. At night or in the clouds, you can literally be flying upside down or in a dive without ever realizing it.  JFK Jr.’s accident, very close to where I live, unfortunately is only one example of that.  Gut feel and instinct will only take you so far.  That’s why we are drilled over and over to read and interpret our control panel instruments, not to trust our senses.
  

  ---

What am I going to do without this plane I loved so much?  I’d tell you, but it’s a beautiful afternoon in January, so  I’m off for a ride on my newly acquired Honda Shadow 750 motorcycle.  Vrrooommmm…

By the way, if you see any parallels between what I learned from flying and what you learned about selling, please let us know in a comment. Come on, be part of the conversation…

When you consider a typical enterprise, you’ll find that almost every department has a set of processes or procedures and metrics by which performance is measured: finance (GAAP), manufacturing (ISO 9000 and/or Six Sigma), customer service (customer satisfaction, such as Net Promoter), HR (employee retention, 360 degree surveys), logistics (throughput, on-time delivery), Information Technology (TCO: Total Cost of Ownership), and even marketing (direct marketing campaign conversion rates, for example). In most companies, the last bastion to institutionalize formal processes and comprehensive and accurate measurement is sales.

Why is Sales Last When It Comes to Measurement?

The root cause of the sales function being last in line is related to the personalities, traits, and established behavior patterns of many (often very smart, but right-brained) sales executives who came up through the ranks of sales themselves. Back when they were salesreps, process and measurement was uncommon in sales. It was much less of a critical component for success than it is today. At that same time, the engineers, accountants, and factory workers in that same company were driven by process—the output of their work carefully monitored, measured, and adjusted along the way by (often left-brained) management.

We know that relatively few companies measure the impact of sales training. Among the reasons they tell us are:

• Cost: They believe it’s too expensive
• Lack of staff expertise in measurement
• Internal tracking, analytics, and forecasting systems unreliable
• Lack of standard sales processes against which to measure
• Lack of sales competencies against which to measure
• Afraid measurement might prove it’s ineffective
• Sales cycle too long to allow measurement in reasonable time
• Too many changes at the same time to make measurement meaningful

We know that most of these are excuses and companies that wish to measure the return on their sales training spend can do it relatively easily and inexpensively.

What’s the answer?

As an integral component of your sales methodology, monitor five to eight carefully selected leading and lagging indicators to measure ongoing productivity—not activity—of every member of your sales team. Based upon those behavioral and performance indicators, you can make adjustments to your processes when necessary, redeploying resources, responding quickly to new competitive threats, and providing the field with the right messages, tools, strategies and tactics—before it’s too late.

Here are a few of the metrics companies employing performance measurement best-practices are using to gain transparency into what is really coming down the pipeline:

• Accuracy of reps’ projected dates for opportunities moving from one phase of the sales cycle to the next.
• Average opportunity attrition rate from one phase of the sales cycle to the next.
• Adherence of individual sales people to new behaviors learned during training.

One you have your sales process in place, especially the steps, actions, tasks, qualification criteria, and the metrics (like the examples above), you can automate this with a strong Sales 2.0 Analytics solution.

Installing, then monitoring leading and lagging sales performance indicators and making appropriate real time adjustments in approach, process, and actions is a critical component of stellar sales performance. As Peter Drucker said, “You can’t improve what you don’t measure.”

ESR’s Leadership Role in Methods for Measuring the Impact of Sales Training

In 2007, ESR began studying the discipline of measuring the impact of sales training. We published our first Guide to Measuring Sales Performance back then, and audited the sales training impact measurement programs and systems of a number of sales training companies, including Wilson Learning, The Complex Sale, Sales Performance International, and Performance Methods, Inc.

We learned a lot since then and have shared our knowledge with numbers of other sales training providers who have built their own measurement systems.

I’ve gathered four experts in the area of sales training measurement for a panel.  They will be sharing with you what works and what doesn’t with respect to measuring the impact of sales training.  Why don’t you join us?

Complimentary Webinar: Measuring the Impact of Sales Training:
How to Document the Quantitative Impact

Wednesday, January 11, 2012 – 12:00 ET / 9:00 PT / 1800 GMT

Panelists:

Tim Riesterer, Chief Strategy and Marketing Officer, Corporate Visions Dave Christofaro, Senior Program Manager, Sales Performance International LaVon Koerner, Chief Revenue Officer, RevenueStorm Bruce Wedderburn, EVP of Channel & Enablement, Huthwaite

Sponsors include:

• Chally Group Worldwide
• Sales Management Association

Photo source: Fotolia.com

Seven years ago I was flown to Lake Como, Italy, by the CEO of a global corporation based in Sweden. I was to facilitate a full-day workshop with ten country managers and division presidents. The subject was strategies for improving sales effectiveness within their business units. Not exactly sales training, but close enough…

I arrived at the resort on Lake Como after three flights—Martha’s Vineyard to Boston, Boston to Geneva (overnight), then Geneva to Milan—exhausted and needing sleep very, very badly. My hosts saw me arrive in the late morning and convinced me to spend a few hours getting acquainted with the team and the venue before a brief workshop I was to run that afternoon. By the time dinner rolled around it was too late for a nap, so I stayed with the group until 10:00, then went back to my room. I would catch a solid 8 hours and be in fine shape for the challenging day ahead.

At nine the next morning, the U.S. country manager banged on my door, screaming, “Dave! Dave! DAVE!” We were supposed to start at 8:30. I had slept through the two alarms I set. And the wake-up call from the front desk never happened.

I jumped into the shower, lacerated my face in three places in my attempt to shave. I was out of the door in 15 minutes. Fortunately I had pressed my shirt and slacks before I went to bed. I ran as fast as I could to the conference room, dragging my open laptop with the power cords trailing…

When I arrived at the conference room, sweaty, out of breath, with patches of tissue staunching the flow of blood from the cuts my face, one of the country managers was in front, moderating a discussion. The CEO cornered me and said, “Stein. You are off to a very, very bad start. I don’t know what you are going to do to recover. I am not happy at all. You have until lunch to get our interest.” With that, he sat down, crossed his arms, and stared at the front of the room. Mamma Mia!

Sharing with my audience the fact that that this had never happened to me before didn’t do anything but anger them further. What I considered a sincere apology didn’t help either.

By the time we took a break for lunch, I got two raised eyebrows from the CEO, which I interpreted as, “Okay, you have my interest.” Evidently I did, because he said we would resume our session after lunch. I decided to eat at a table by myself in order not to make anyone I sat down with uncomfortable. There was only one American in the group, and he stayed away from me. Smart guy.

By the end of the day everyone was engaged, including the CEO. They were very appreciative of the content, how I managed the session, and my ability to recover from such a disastrous start. I was beyond happy when they invited me to a special dinner for the team. By the end of the evening we were all joking about the incident. (I wrote this story up in an article a year or so after the event. Coincidentally the CEO happened to read it. I got a very nice note from him.)

I got back to my room at 11:00. I had to get up at 4:30 am for the limo to the airport for the flight home.

You guessed it. I stayed up all night.

There were other stories and some great comments on this discussion, including those by Tibor Shanto, Leanne Hoagland-Smith, Josiane Feigon, and Craig Rosenberg.  Lots of fun.

Photo source: ItalianVisits.com

Please take a few minutes and complete the 2011 Sales Person Onboarding/New Hire Sales Training Survey, register for our upcoming Sales Expert Thought-Leader Panel Series, and…

Happy holidays and a healthy and happy New Year to all of you and all of yours.

Beginning in January, 2011, I will be moderating four new, unscripted, unedited panel discussions on today’s hot button sales issues. Join me online to listen, ask questions, and get valuable insights from 16 industry sales training industry leaders.

• Registration is free and easy
• Each expert panel lasts one hour
• 4 expert panelists per session
• No scripts, no PowerPoints, no posturing, positioning, or promoting.

Can’t attend the one(s) you’d like?  Register for the event(s), and as a no-show, we’ll send you instructions for downloading the MP3 archive.

Measuring the Impact of Sales Training: How to Document the Quantitative Impact

Wednesday, January 11, 2012 – 12:00 ET / 9:00 PT / 1800 GMT

Panelists:

Tim Riesterer, Chief Strategy and Marketing Officer, Corporate Visions Dave Christofaro, Senior Program Manager, Sales Performance International LaVon Koerner, Chief Revenue Officer, RevenueStorm Bruce Wedderburn, EVP of Channel & Enablement, Huthwaite

Sales Leadership Strategies in a Virtual, Mobile, and Social World

Wednesday, January 25, 2011 – 12:00 ET / 9:00 PT / 1800 GMT

Panelists:

Dave Kurlan, CEO, Kurlan Associates Jim Brodo, VP Marketing, Richardson Beverly Lock, Principal, 3g Selling Donal Daly, CEO, The TAS Group

What Sales Management Needs to Know Today About Inside Sales and Cold Calling

Wednesday, February 8, 2012 – 12:00 ET / 9:00 PT / 1800 GMT

Panelists:

Gary Walker, EVP Channel Sales & Operations, CustomerCentric Selling Ron LaVine, Principal, Accelerated Sales Training Sharon Daniels, CEO, AchieveGlobal Leigh Hooker, COO, Miller Heiman

Enhancing Customer Relationships Through the Integration of Sales and Service

Wednesday,  February 22, 2012 – 12:00 ET / 9:00 PT / 1800 GMT

Panelists:

Sharon Daniels, CEO, AchieveGlobal Bob Branson, Principal, TACK-USA John Holland, Chief Content Officer, CustomerCentric Selling Jo Thompson, Procter (an Imparta Company)

Note: Other than an introduction of each participant and sponsor, there will be no promotion by panelists during the discussions.  In addition, questions from the audience will be answered live, via audio, by the panelists.

You will need a computer with Internet access and a telephone or VoIP capabilities to participate.

Call us at +1 (508) 313-9585 for details.

Photo Source: © Ivan Hafizov – Fotolia.com

You may be aware of Executive Conversation, a sales performance improvement company that focuses on executive selling skills around financial and business acumen.  Executive Conversation (acquire ESR’s profile and evaluation of Executive Conversation) says there are five competencies required for B2B selling that are under-appreciated and under-leveraged:

1. Business Knowledge.  The ability to understand a customer’s business model and effectively interpret the macro economic factors impacting their performance.
2. Customer Insight.  The ability to gain the account insight required to identify new opportunities and to credibly engage around a customer’s strategic initiatives.
3. Financial Acumen.  The ability to interpret financial trends and analyze customer financial performance to pinpoint areas of need.
4. Return On Investment.   The ability to credibly quantify the financial impact of investing in your solutions using metrics meaningful to the customer.
5. Executive Engagement.  The ability to credibly engage, build relationships and sell at executive levels within customers.

Certainly Executive Conversation isn’t the only company that serves to transfer financial and business skills to salespeople.  Back in January, Mercuri International acquired Celemi, a business simulation company.  Smart move for Mercuri. Very good news for their clients.

Allow me to introduce another proponent of financial acumen, Jack Malcolm, who runs Falcon Performance Group, and is the author of Bottom-Line Selling: The Salesperson’s Guide to Improving Customer Profits. Jack was kind enough to answer some of my questions.

Dave Stein: Your book is Bottom-Line Selling: The Salesperson’s Guide to Improving Customer Profits.  What does a salesperson has to do to affect their customer’s profits?

Jack Malcolm: At the big picture level, the first step is to see their customer’s enterprise as a vast engine for generating cash. They can improve the cash flow engine in three ways: making it more effective (increasing the customer’s sales and margins), efficient (reduce costs and improve asset efficiency, and fast (reduce cycle time of their business processes). That’s the financial impact. In order to arrive at the financial impact, they have to intimately understand the functional impact: how their solutions improve their customer’s processes, by reducing inputs and risk, and increasing or improving outputs.

DS: There has been a well-defined need for financial selling skills going back decades.  Some training firms deliver this content, and there are few that focus on it alone. Why is it that more B2B companies haven’t taken hold of the proven way to increase sales and combat against commoditization?

JM: Probably the most common excuse is that they say their people are already doing this well, although with just a few questions it’s easy to figure out that they don’t know what they don’t know. As to the real reasons, I have three guesses: One is that sales managers are afraid of showing their lack of mastery of the process. The CFO of one of my clients told me that his own sales leadership does not understand the concepts I teach their reps. In addition, it requires a team effort between sales and marketing to work together to define the connections between their offerings and improving customer’s processes and profits, and that team effort doesn’t seem to be too common. Finally, a lot of companies pay lip service to a consultative, patient approach but at the same time discourage taking the time to fundamentally learn new skills by demanding immediate, short-term quota attainment.

DS: This book could be seen as too big a hurdle to jump for the average B2B salesperson who needs to improve their performance.  Reading a book about financial acumen and selling skills is one thing.  Getting in front of a customer’s finance person and making a business case is another.  What’s the proven path to accomplish this?

JM: It’s an evolutionary process that goes through four stages—familiarity, application, validation, and mastery. The first step is to take the mystery and intimidation out of annual reports and financial statements. If they read the book with their customer’s annual reports in front of them, they’ll start seeing the connections. The next step is to begin applying the ideas by developing hypotheses about the process and financial impacts of their solutions, and then validate those with the appropriate process and problem owners, before they take it to the finance person or ultimate decision maker. Finally, when they do get in front of the finance person, don’t act like you know it all; approach them humbly enough so that they don’t try to shoot you down, and use the champions you have developed during the sales process to support you. Over time, knowledge accumulates and confidence grows. If it could happen overnight, everyone could do it and then it wouldn’t be exceptional.

DS: I would expect that anyone you would hire to sell for you would have to have the understanding and skills you outline in your book.  What would you say to sales managers regarding their own professional development and the people they would hope to hire in the future.

JM: Sales managers have to set the example with the application of these skills; they need to coach to them and coordinate the internal and external resources to support the financial selling approach. In my experience teaching these concepts, it’s the curious, learning-oriented individuals who take them and run with them. If I were hiring, I’d hire for smarts, teachability and business sense rather than old-line sales experience. Sometimes bad habits can be very hard to break.

Jack Malcolm is President of Falcon Performance Group, which is dedicated to improving the effectiveness of sales professionals in the complex sale. He began his career as a banker, which seems like a strange qualification for a sales consultant, but it gave him a solid grounding in business and financial knowledge which he uses to teach a unique mix of business acumen and complex-sale strategy and skills that today’s demanding customers require from top sales professionals.

There are several relevant and important subjects that we covered, including a review of 2011, leaders in 15 different categories.  You know by now that ESR doesn’t believe there is a single “best” sales training company.  In fact, pursuing that line of thinking has gotten many companies seeking sales performance improvement in a great deal of trouble.

We also looked at the changing sales training buying patterns, the impact of technology on sales training, and a look at 2012 and beyond.

I discussed the challenges faced by sales trainers and sales training firms of different sizes.  Of course every training firm is different, but here are some generalizations:

Among the challenges for firms with less than $1 million in sales are:

• The trainer’s need to build equity.  Since there is only so much one trainer can make training, speaking and consulting, trainers look for additional sources of value though books, virtual learning programs, etc.;
• The difficulty in having enough money to invest in marketing. Guerrilla marketing is cheap, but you often get what you pay for; and
• Getting past the $500k/year ceiling. ESR has some proven insights and strategies for growing smaller training businesses.

For firms from $1 million to $15 million in sales, some of the challenges are:

• Developing and executing a serious growth strategy incorporating services, products, geographic and market expansion, and scaling the sales and delivery function;
• Deciding on and recruiting professional management;
• Allocating the funds and making the right strategic investments in technology;
• Getting invited to more evaluations; and
• Balancing life style versus company growth.

For those sales training firms over $15 million in sales, among the challenges are:

• Continually innovating to keep the content relevant, compelling, and competitive;
• Having plan for achieving market domination;
• Slowing down old customer attrition;
• Maintaining margins during tough economic times and low-ball competition; and
• Leveraging alumni (in some cases numbering over a million).

These points were chosen from a much larger list accumulated through interviews with more than 150 sales training company owners and principals.

The archive of The State of The Sales Training Industry is here. (Free registration required.)

Photo source: Fotolia.com

Dave Stein: How can the latest innovations in marketing automation technology help sales?

Brian Reilly: Marketing automation, especially in the B2B space, has come a long way in the last decade.  During that time we have seen sales force automation offered in an SaaS (software-as-a-service, a great example of which is Salesforce.com) environment experience tremendous adoption across verticals.  Best-in-class sales teams are managing their process automation and pipeline reporting through these tools to the great benefit of their companies.

Marketing organizations have not been as lucky.  While sales has mastered their process on top of a solid tools foundation, marketing has traditionally been forced to work with a set of disparate tools that often don’t talk to each other.  Add to this the ever-expanding nature of marketing as additional channels are being added quarterly, if not more often.  Marketers must balance inbound channel spend against outbound channel spend and often rely on a patchwork of vendors—email, direct mail, website and others—to keep their demand generation machine running.  With the rapid evolution of SaaS marketing automation technology over the last 6-7 years, marketers are now starting to adopt a set of interconnected tools which excel at creating high-quality demand for sales.

Eloqua (an SaaS marketing automation provider) regularly cites statistics that show their customers experience big leaps in demand generation as a result of their tool.  Their contention is that, starting at the top of the funnel, leads are being more fully qualified before being passed to sales which results in conversion rate lift of 10-20% as a result.  This, of course, has positive downstream impacts as “won” opportunity rates and value are higher for leads generated and qualified using marketing automation tools and processes.  Eloqua, as an example, has even created an “RPM index” which measures the performance of companies who have adopted a revenue performance index tool, specifically Eloqua, against those who have not. This index shows that companies who have put significant efforts into marketing automation best practices grow at faster rates than those who do not.

DS: Why should marketing’s mastery of marketing automation and Revenue Performance Management (RPM) matter to sales executives?

BR: Revenue Performance Management represents a scientific approach to marketing—the combination of inbound and outbound activities that are required to produce, score and nurture high quality leads.  Better leads enable sales to win high-value opportunities more efficiently.  According to Forrester, companies that excel at nurturing leads not ready to purchase generate 50% more sales ready leads at 33% lower cost.

RPM was coined by Eloqua in 2010 to move the definition of the “marketing automation” away from something very tools-centric.  Tools are tools.  “RPM” captures the combination of tools, processes and people that it takes to generate more revenue more efficiently.  It focuses on the varied set of skills that it takes to do that—sales and marketing alignment, customer-centric program development, and insightful analytics.  Sales tools alone cannot do these things—even Salesforce.com has its limitations.  Salesforce.com is excellent at catching leads and providing a foundation for a world-class inside and field sales process but it is not the place to go to generate those leads.  Marketers need to build their process around a set of tools which includes outbound vehicles like email, direct mail, text and phone.  They also need to manage the inbound assets like landing pages, whitepapers and case studies.

It takes this combination of sales and marketing platforms—sales force automation combined with marketing automation—to create a revenue performance machine.

DS: ESR w0uld add sales process automation as a requirement these days… In any case, what responsibility does sales have for RPM?

BR: Revenue performance management in a high-consideration, B2B context does not work unless sales is on-board with the strategy.  Marketing can invest all the money in their budgets on tools, process and hard-to-find people in order to create a revenue performance machine but that money will be fundamentally wasted unless they have the buy-in of sales management.  Someone has to agree to catch and validate the high quality leads that marketing has worked so hard to produce.

Now, we all know that sales does not want to waste an inordinate amount of time chasing down poor quality leads.

DS: Or any time at all…

BR: Right.  There are just not enough hours in the day to waste on unqualified “mickey mouse” leads.  According to Forrester Research, 25% of marketers who adopt lead management processes report that sales teams contact prospects within one day.  Only 10% of marketers report the same follow-up without mature lead management processes.  That’s why the Sirius Decisions funnel definitions have become so popular over the last couple of years—because they work.  Sirius Decisions has provided a well-defined set of lead stages for sales and marketing to agree upon and implement.  If sales leadership wants to get the true value of RPM, it has an obligation to create this type of foundation for sales and marketing alignment.

Once aligned, collaborative sales and marketing teams  will begin to see the impact that mastery of RPM has on the top of the funnel.  If done correctly, sales will only have to deal with the hottest high quality leads.  When this happens, they can begin to turn to increasing the velocity at which leads and deals move through the funnel.  Once the fundamentals are sound, sales and marketing can work on globalizing (if relevant) and optimizing the processes.

DS: What does it take to succeed at RPM?

BR: First the bad news:  50% of respondents to a 2011 Focus survey stated they have not realized the full value of their marketing automation investment, and less than 25% use their platforms to their full potential.

DS: Shelf-ware.

BR: Regretfully, yes. Now, the good news:  marketing automation in the cloud is easier than it was a decade ago but it’s still not exactly “easy.”  It takes an executive team that has bought into the possibilities that marketing automation technology and the overarching concepts of RPM present.  RPM requires both a top-down and bottom-up approach to system adoption.  The executive team has to agree that they will manage their process through these tools while the field sales and marketing team must agree to leverage these tools.

Mastering RPM also requires creating an operational team to support the effort by creating processes for implementing new campaigns and creating reusable content.  Content is critical to making RPM work because content is what keeps both prospects and existing customers engaged.  Campaigns are heavily dependent on having content available to keep your product or service top-of-mind at critical points in the buyer’s journey.  Customers are often researching their buying decisions independent of sales and it’s 1:1 campaigns supported by valuable content that moves them from awareness to purchase..

Additionally, executives in the sales and marketing organizations must agree upon standard metrics definitions in order to make RPM successful.  By standardizing on a set of metrics and by defining how data is collected and calculated, organizations create a foundation on which measurements can be compared over time, across business units and around the globe.

DS: What kind of lift do organizations experience that invest in RPM?

BR: As I  mentioned above, Eloqua has created their “RPM Index” to try to better understand the impact of an RPM approach (not just tools) on an organization.  Similarly, Marketo, an Eloqua competitor, has created an “RPM Quotient”—their metric for benchmarking success through the use of their tool.  Marketo cites impressive numbers when discussing the impact of their tool on their customer’s business—a nearly 50% increase in campaign effectiveness, a 17% increase in sales wins and an 11% increase in contract value.

Marketo is telling a story similar to Eloqua’s:  using best-in-class marketing automation tools as the foundation for the revenue performance management strategy, innovative companies consistently demonstrate a significant increase in revenue (~25% in the first 12 months).  Forrester’s research supports this assertion:  46% of marketers with mature lead management processes facilitated by marketing automation have sales teams that follow up on more than 75% of marketing-generated leads.

From all of the research that’s been done, it’s clear that RPM works when properly implemented.  RPM really is just the next generation of CRM best practices that have evolved over the course of the last two decades.  What started as sales force and call center automation has grown to encompass both offline and online marketing.  With the advent of SaaS vendors like Eloqua, Marketo and Pardot, RPM has become far more accessible for cost-conscious companies outside of the Fortune 1000.  The rise of service companies like Solerte, created to support and nurture best practices, gives companies outside of the Fortune 1000 the ability to experience the positive impact of world-class revenue performance management.

Brian Reilly has over 15 years of CRM consulting experience and has worked on both the client- and the agency/consulting-side. Over the course of his career, Brian’s been successful at growing professional services organizations focused on marketing automation, CRM and ERP over the course of the last decade.

Brian has a track record of success as a start-up entrepreneur, executive and as a leading marketing automation consultant. His broad-based experience, combined with a background in customer insights, sales and marketing gives him a strong foundation in the CRM programs and application space.

Brian received his Master of Business Administration from the University of Texas at Austin, McCombs School of Business and a Bachelor of Arts from Binghamton University, SUNY. He has worked with leading CRM-focused companies like Dell, CDW and Logitech and for SaaS-focused consulting firms such as Astadia and Extraprise.

Here is a datasheet on Brian’s Revenue Performance Management Services.