why sales training fails (2)

WHY SALES TRAINING FAILSby Mike Schultz & John Doerr

Discover 7 common mistakes that derail sales training efforts and what you can do to avoid them.

Why Sales Training Fails

Report Summary

Between 85% and 90% of sales training has no lasting impact after 120 days. At the same time, companies are spending billions of dollars on sales training each year. With such a high failure rate, that’s billions of dollars wasted.

Training can be a disappointment right away when it doesn’t go well, or it can be a disappointment months later when results don’t materialize. Regardless, sales training strikes out a lot. When it does, it’s usually for common reasons. By avoiding these mistakes, you set yourself up for successful training initiatives that lead to increased sales performance and long-term revenue growth.

7 Reasons Why Sales Training Fails

1. Failure to Align Desired Outcomes with Learning Needs: Leaders often base their objectives and expecations for sales training on wishful thinking versus incisive analysis. Without analyzing the learning needs of your team, sales training is often irrelevant and uninspiring, and doesn’t produce results.

2. Failure to Build Fluent Sales Knowledge as well as Skills: Most sales training focuses on building sales skills, not building knowledge. Your sellers have to know—and be able to speak fluently about—your products and services, the needs you solve, the marketplace, your competition, and more.

3. Failure to Assess and Develop Attributes: It’s not enough to give your team the capability to sell; you have to know if the members of your team have the attributes required for top sales performance. With this knowledge, you will learn not only who can sell, but who will sell at a high level, and how to motivate and develop them to reach their potential.

4. Failure to Define, Support, and Drive Action: Even if sellers leave training with increased skills, they often don’t know what to do to get the best results. Sales process must dovetail well with training. Organizations should adopt a consistent method of selling in order to raise performance across the board. Coaching that includes goal setting and regular action planning and reviews maximize action.

5. Failure to Deliver Training that Engages: Adults learn by doing. Your training program needs to be engaging, customized, delivered by facilitators participants can respect, and allow opportunities for sellers to practice their newly learned skills.

6. Failure to Make Learning Stick and Transfer: Most sales training is a multi-day event in which sellers learn and practice new skills. Without reinforcement to make the learning stick, most will forget what they learned, how inspired they were, and they will return to old behaviors.

7. Failures of Evaluation, Accountability, and Continuous Improvement: Few companies actually evaluate the effectiveness of their sales training and sales performance in general. Without evaluation, it’s nearly impossible to hold sellers accountable for changing and improving behavior, or for taking actions and achieving results.

Discover 7 common mistakes that derail sales training efforts and what you can do to avoid them.

© RAIN Group | RAINGroup.com | 1

The Measure of Success

Nine out of 10 sales training initiatives have no lasting impact beyond 120 days.1

Perhaps you’ve had more luck (and we hope you have), but if you’re reading this report, something about the “Why Sales Training Fails” title resonated with you.

Whether you’ve felt the pain and want to avoid it next time, or you’re ahead of the game and like to line up your ducks for success, you want to know why sales training fails. And, assuming you can avoid the failures, how you can make your training initiative succeed. Here are two striking statistics:

+ Companies spend $3.4 to $4.6 billion on sales training every year with outsourced sales training providers.2

+ Between 85% and 90% of sales training has no lasting impact after 120 days.3 That’s a lot of investment with little to show for it beyond short-term, short-lived gains.

Failure of Sales Training

Fortunately, the reasons sales training fails are predictable and fixable for those so inclined. Here are the most common problems we see:

1. Failure to Align Desired Outcomes with Learning Needs

2. Failure to Build Fluent Sales Knowledge as well as Skills

3. Failure to Assess and Develop Attributes

4. Failure to Define, Support, and Drive Action

5. Failure to Deliver Training that Engages

6. Failure to Make Learning Stick and Transfer

7. Failures of Evaluation, Accountability, and Continuous Improvement

We’ll cover each in turn in this report.

Why Sales Training Failsby Mike Schultz & John Doerr

http://www.raingroup.com



Failure to Align Desired Outcomes with Learning Needs1

I was bold in the pursuit of knowledge, never fearing to follow truth and reason to whatever results they led.

- Thomas Jefferson

“

Sales training has virtually no chance of producing lasting results if business leaders base their objectives and expectations of results on wishful thinking. They underestimate what it will take to implement training that will create desired behavioral change. They overestimate the impact of periodic and uncoordinated training events. As researchers at the University of Wisconsin and Louisiana State University put it, business objectives for sales training are all too often “platitudes rather than real plans for action.”4

Healthcare or Entertainment?

While writing our book, Insight Selling: Surprising Research on What Sales Winners Do Differently (Wiley, 2014), Neil Rackham commented to us how sales training can be compared to two industries: healthcare and entertainment. We hadn’t thought of it quite like this, but we certainly see the same thing.

When sales training is like healthcare, its purpose is to make something better. For ‘healthcare’ sales training to succeed, you need the right understanding of the issues, the right treatment plan, and dedication from the healthcare provider and the patient to stick with the plan.

When sales training is more like entertainment, it’s just an enjoyable diversion. It might make an impression—you might even remember months later how fun it was—but it doesn’t accomplish much beyond that.

We recently spoke with a business leader who was planning a half-day sales training program. His desired outcome was transforming a service and delivery team into a proactive sales force tasked with increasing sales to existing accounts by selling new offerings. He communicated to us that success was critical. The future of the company literally hung in the balance.

We asked if there was any training delivery time available over-and-above the four hours? No, a half-day was it. We asked if it was possible to invest time and energy before the training through elearning, or after the training with learning reinforcement and coaching. No, just the half-day, and could we focus on really jazzing up the team?

The training needed to be healthcare, but the approach was entertainment. We didn’t think it was going to work. The proportion of the input (i.e., the training initiative) needed to be rigorous enough to produce the desired output (i.e., account penetration with a team not used to selling, let alone inspiring buyers with new ideas, which is what they had to do). In this case, the business objective was clear, but the learning and change effort was nowhere near aligned to achieve it.

Under-resourced sales training efforts don’t have the

horsepower to produce what they need to, and often

don’t produce much at all.




Assess the Learning Needs of Your Team

When it comes to the learning needs of sellers, leaders need to figure out:

+ Where your sales team is now regarding the skills, knowledge, and attributes needed to succeed (this is the starting point, or Point A)

+ Each individual’s improvement potential

+ In which sales role each individual is most likely to succeed

+ What it looks like when they’ve succeeded (this is the New Reality, or Point B)

+ What kind of effort and time it’s going to take to get from Point A to BMany companies fail to assess their team’s learning needs rigorously enough.

What Happens When Leaders Don’t Assess Needs

When leaders don’t dig to find out what sellers need in order to produce the outcomes they seek, it makes for sales training initiatives that:

+ Focus on content the team doesn’t need

+ Leave out content the team does need

+ Fail to deliver content at the right level of sophistication (e.g., too basic or too advanced…getting it just right is left to chance)

+ Fail to build learning processes rigorous enough to actually develop needed skills and knowledge to the point they transfer to on-the-job behaviors.

Before implementing a sales training program, the companies

that succeed are serious about making sure the learning approach is

rigorous enough to do its part in producing behavioral change

and getting results.

Compared to other firms, 36% more best-in-class5 companies have a strategy for creating targeted individual development plans based on assessment output.6




Failure to Build Fluent Sales Knowledge as well as Skills2

At the risk of oversimplifying, sales training initiatives work when they help sellers do things that produce maximum revenue.

Without rigorous inquiry into what those things are, and what it will take to make sure sellers do them effectively, the focus of sales training ends up heavily skewed towards skills development. Whether it’s prospecting, asking questions to uncover needs, making sales presentations, maximizing account revenue, or something else, these kinds of skills topics tend to dominate most training. While sales skills are essential, they are only one side of a very important coin: capability.

The other side of the coin is sales knowledge (Fig. 1).

Your sellers need to have expert sales knowledge. They must be able to speak fluently about:

+ The marketplace

+ The dynamics of the customer’s business

+ Your company and your value proposition

+ The needs you solve and the difference you make

+ Your products, services, and overall approach as solutions to those needs

+ The competition and how you win

+ What happens when buyers buy, including what makes implementation most successful In our What Sales Winners Do Differently research, we asked buyers what most separated sales winners from second-place finishers.7 Included in the top 10 are factors such as:

+ Educated me with new ideas or perspectives

+ Persuaded me we would achieve results

+ Understood my needs

+ Helped me avoid potential pitfalls

+ Crafted a compelling solution

+ Overall value from the company superior to other options

Without the appropriate sales knowledge, sellers have a difficult time doing the things that top performers do.

Some company leaders say to us, “Wait. We provide knowledge training. We even hold a retreat each year focused on knowledge topics.” Unfortunately, this typically doesn’t get the job done. It’s often focused only on product or service offerings, which isn’t nearly sufficient. With a common death-by-PowerPoint delivery format, sellers don’t remember what they heard. Some companies do better than this, requiring sellers to study the content and pass tests for knowledge accuracy. Still, they find their sellers don’t weave what they ‘learned’ into their sales conversations.

For sellers to put knowledge to work they don’t just need accuracy, they need fluency.

Figure 1. Right Skills + Right Knowledge = Can Do

Capability KnowledgeSkills

You needsalespeople who You need the right

Can do and

Key components




We define fluency as accuracy plus speed plus appropriate breadth and depth. When knowledge training stops at accuracy (if it even gets this far), companies miss out on a major revenue growth opportunity had they trained to fluency (Fig. 2).

Indeed, best-in-class companies are better at demonstrating product knowledge, understanding client business challenges, and mapping products and services to those challenges.8 In other words, best-in-class companies have fluent sellers.

Sellers need to know more than just their offerings and how they solve needs. They need to know the buyer industry and their own. They need to know what happens after a buyer buys, and how to help them navigate the murky waters of difficult implementations. They need to know how they can maximize their impact on the buyer’s success.

Sales training will continue to fail until sales knowledge training:

1. Takes its appropriate place alongside sales skills training

2. Covers the right content

3. Trains sellers to fluency

To this last point, many say, “Fluency happens over time. You can’t expect someone to become an expert right away.” True, not right away.

However, it can and should happen a lot faster than it does at most companies. Build knowledge experts, and train to fluency. Otherwise, sellers won’t be capable of leading the masterful sales conversations you need them to lead.

Accuracy is not enough. Sellers need fluency.

Figure 2. The Real Revenue Opportunity: Training Sellers to Fluency

Top 10%“Rainmakers”

Bottom 25%

Average

Top 25%

BEGINNER(O� the mark and slow)

Training usually stops here

Real revenue opportunity

ACCURATE FLUENT

SALE

S PE

RFO

RMA

NCE

(in $

sol

d)




Example: Why Skills Training is Not Enough

One of the most important skills in sales is, as many people refer to it, asking great questions. In skills training, this often takes the form of:

+ Defining what asking great questions means

+ Giving examples of what it looks like when it’s done right

+ Walking through the process of asking great questions in specific stages (e.g., prospecting, needs discovery, overcoming objections) of the sales cycle

+ Allowing participants a little time to craft a handful of great questions

+ Practicing asking great questions in role plays and case studies

+ Sharing and discussing all the great questions everyone came up with

Assuming the training is designed and delivered well, this is laudable. But is it enough?

Ask yourself:

+ Even if your sellers practiced these skills in a training class, could they ask questions that uncover needs across all products and services your company offers?

+ Could they appropriately include all of your products and services as solutions to the various needs that prospects might have?

+ Would they be able to position the company’s value proposition the right way for the different situations they encounter?

+ Would they consistently get all of this right in the moment during a sales conversation?

Even if your sellers have the skills to ask great questions, it’s often a lack of knowledge that holds

them back from actually putting “asking great questions” to work for them.




When I (John) worked for a large company, I knew a number of people who were top performers—really excellent results producers—who retired. But there was a big problem…they never told anyone! For years, they just kept showing up to work, but they weren’t nearly the producers they used to be. They had the skills to be top performers—they could sell—but they were no longer actually doing what it took to produce results. After years of overachievement, results dropped as their commitment waned.

In this case, attributes were the difference between past success and current mediocrity. It’s not enough to just give your team the skills to sell; you have to know if they have the attributes required for top performance. We call these attributes drivers and detractors of sales success. Together these will tell you not only who can sell, but who will sell at a high level (Fig. 3).

According to research by Aberdeen Group, 82% of

best-in-class companies require sales training, as compared with only 68% of laggard companies.9

Assess Attributes Along with Skills and Knowledge

Researchers publishing in refereed academic sales journals note assessing “competencies” (we use the word attributes) is a must.10, 11

When sales leaders don’t assess their team’s attributes, sales training fails because:

+ Sellers don’t have the drivers to succeed: People end up in sales training who may actually gain the requisite skills and knowledge to succeed, but they don’t have the drivers in place to achieve top performance, or, sometimes, any performance at all.

+ Sellers have detractors holding them back: People end up in sales training who have some drivers in place to succeed, but may have detractor attributes that act like weights pulling them down.

Sales Drivers and Detractors

If the drivers of success aren’t in place—meaning the person doesn’t have, for example, passion for work and for selling, performance orientation, sense of urgency, assertiveness, and so on—it’s quite possible the person shouldn’t even be in the training at all. Much as you might want your kids to go to medical school, if they failed chemistry and what they want to do is teach art history, medicine rarely works out.

If too many detractors are in place, the seller might have capability, but they can still fail.

Failure to Assess and Improve Attributes3

Figure 3. Right Drivers + Acceptable Level of Detractors = Will Do

DetractorsDriversAttributes



Can do

Will do

and

and

Key components




Example Detractor: Lacks Assertiveness

Say a seller is listening to a prospect talk about his plans for a technology purchase. The prospect says he plans to move forward in three areas. The seller, having been through these technology challenges many times before, knows two are good ideas, but the third is a disaster waiting to happen. He should bring this up to the prospect. If he does and, after the buyer makes his case, the seller still thinks the third is a bad idea, he should talk to the buyer about it. However, if the seller lacks assertiveness, it’s likely he won’t say anything at all. A common reason why sellers lack assertiveness is their need for approval. Sellers with a need for approval have great difficulty speaking with prospects about anything that might upset the prospect or rock their relationship boat. In sales, need for approval is when the desire to be liked and preference for harmony are stronger than desire for sales success. About 47% of sellers have a need for approval to the extent that it affects their sales behaviors.12

In the table to the right, we share examples of how the lack of assertiveness due to a need for approval creates sales problems.

Neglect real, incisive inquiry into each person’s attributes and sales training initiatives leave the gate with weights tying them down.

What Happens Common ProblemsSeller avoids confrontation • Can’t maintain peer dynamic

with executives • Won’t push back on a buyer when it would help the buyer if they did• Will accept stalls and put- offs, get pushed down the agenda for action• Pipeline fills up, looks big, doesn’t yield business

Problems with questions(won’t ask tough questions or enough questions, cuts meetings short)

• Insufficient needs discovery • Leaves buyer in control of discussions• Doesn’t establish expertise, incisiveness of thinking

Call reluctance • Won’t prospect because worried about rejection• Won’t prospect or follow up because doesn’t want to “bother” the buyer

Deferential statements and actions (such as being overly effusive)

• Doesn’t maintain peer dynamic• Comes off as needy or meek

Inappropriate follow up Invest time and effort inappropriately in order to gain approval




According to Aberdeen Group, 85% of best-in-class companies use a formal sales methodology, preferably supplied by an external firm.

What’s more, these best-in-class companies are seeing dramatically better performance:

+ 83% of their sales reps reached quota vs. 52% among industry average and 6% for laggard companies

+ 15.4% average year-over-year increase in corporate revenue vs. 5.6% increase for industry average and 1.5% decline among laggard companies

+ 5.3% year-over-year increase in average sales deal size or contract value vs. 0.7% industry average and 2.6% decline among laggard companies

The best-in-class companies are investing more in sales training—more than double that of the average and laggards—and they’re clearly reaping the rewards.13

Process and Methodology

Here are how process and methodology help.

Process: A systematic series of actions, typically grouped in stages, aimed at producing a specific output.

+ Process is a guide to action. No guide, and you’re on the road to nowhere.

+ Process helps people be efficient and get more done.

+ Process prevents re-inventing the wheel.

+ Process allows for process improvement. If you can measure it, you can manage it. Find the people that are succeeding and learn what they’re doing to succeed, then you can help other people do the same.

Methodology: A system of strategies, principles, rules, guidelines, tools, learning approaches, language, and evaluation methods for selling.

+ Methodology provides guidelines and tools for how to do specific things in the sales process like leading sales conversations, prospecting, delivering presentations, closing, goals setting, account expansion, and so on.

+ Methodology creates a shared language that everyone in the company understands, uses, and follows.

+ Methodology helps define “what works” in various areas of the process, and provides a platform to share that across the sales force and company.

For a partial example of how the RAIN Buying and Selling Process and the RAIN Selling methodology have have been tailored and overlaid into a major CRM system, see Fig. 4 (next page). When sellers have visual cues to remind them what they are supposed to do, real time training and tools available, and tracking directly in their CRM, both the process and the method have much better chance for adoption.

If you want sales training to succeed, don’t let it float in a process-less and methodology-less vacuum.

Failure to Define, Support, and Drive Action4




Figure 4. RAIN Selling Built into a Major CRM System

Goals and Action Planning

Process and methodology are essentially guides for behavior. They help you know when to do certain things (process) and how to do them well (methodology). Sales training that gets this far, but doesn’t focus on goal setting and action planning, misses a huge opportunity to boost results. When researching one of our own books, we spoke to Dr. Jim Harter, Gallup Consulting’s Chief Scientist of Workplace Management and Well-Being. Gallup has asked over 12.5 million people, “Do I know what is expected of me at work?” Just over half answered the question, “strongly agree.” In other words, just under half are not so sure what’s expected of them at work.

Dr. Harter further told us, “Workplace performance suffers dramatically with those that answer below ‘strongly agree.’” When sales training helps sellers build and track goals for themselves, it not only erases the problem of sellers knowing what’s expected of them, but also maximizes motivation and commitment.14

With action plans, take care not to build them without first focusing on goal setting. Without clear, written goals, action plans aren’t meaningful to the individual. Without meaning, execution over the long-term suffers.

When goals are in place, not only do they have the effect of maximizing action, they can also increase the sellers’ attributes of passion for

Buyer Stage Dissatisfaction/Investigation Analysis Intervention Selection Contracting

Prospecting Needs Discovery Solution Crafting Solution Presentation CommitmentOpportunity Stage

Seller Actions and Outcomes

Initial prospect research

Plan to penetrate prospect

Initial value proposition compelling

Outreach to generate appointment

Opportunity plan started

Continued prospect research

Plan for �rst appointment

Appointment set

Buyer curiosity and interest generated

Buying process clear and understood

Buyers and buying roles clear

All buyers appropriately involved in conversations

Buyer involvement in solution crafting

Buyer solution pre-agreement

Buyer agrees to speci�c next step

Buyer con�rms you are best option

Buyer agrees with solution implementation plan

Buyer agrees to commitment plan

Buyer signs agreement

Buyer announces purchase

Opportunity presentation, convincing story delivered

Rapport established

Aspirations and A�ictions uncovered

Overall Impact (ROI case) clear

Possible New Reality established

Discussion/presentation of possible approaches

Analysis of issue and a�iction causes clear

Solution crafted

Solution is best to solve client need

Solution is easy to buy

Impact case tightened and clari�ed

Strategy for presenting solution

Proposal checklist

Resonate: Present compelling solution

Resonate: Present Impact and New Reality cases

Di�erentiate: Negate competitor advantages

Substantiate and mitigate risk

Solicit all feedback

Overcome objections

Deliver executable agreement

Negotiate and re�ne proposal

Gain commitment verbal, written, and public

Hando� to implementation team

Facilitating the Purchase

RAIN Buying & Selling Process




Figure 5. A Dynamic Sales Methodology Improves Sales Results

work and sales, their performance orientation, and their money orientation. Together these often increase motivation to succeed in sales.

Earlier in this section we discussed building capability. When sellers are capable, they can sell. Just after that we discussed attributes. When the right attributes are in place, they will sell, and sell well. Add process and methodology,

and goals and action planning to the mix and you add the catalyst to bring it alive: what to do to sell (Fig. 5).

When process and methodology are in place, and sellers have goals and action plans, sales activities are more organized, more energetic, higher volume, more effective, and more efficient.

Coaching Drives Action15

Sales training should help sellers learn to build goals and action plans, but often sales coaches are needed to a) make sure goal and action planning actually happen, and b) make sure using the goals and plans become a part of sellers’ habits. Most sales coaching we encounter focuses on opportunities, or how to win what’s currently in the pipeline. This helps, but it’s not all sales coaches should do.

Sales coaching should focus on maximizing execution as well as advising on opportunities. Great sales coaches actually play five roles to maximize the performance of their selling teams:

1. Define: The best sales coaches help sellers define both their goals and a path to their own personal New Reality, the future state they most desire.

2. Execute: Coaches help sellers build and execute action plans, optimizing seller efficiency and focus.

3. Advise: Coaches give direct advice as appropriate to maximize immediate sales wins.

4. Develop: Coaches develop coachee knowledge, skills, and attributes to improve performance fundamentally.

5. Motivate: Coaches motivate coachees to find and sustain their highest level of energy and action over the long term.

In fact, three of the five roles serve directly to focus seller action on the right activities, and help the seller get the most out of their time and days. Especially when change is necessary and the stakes are high, coaching is essential for success. Without it, sellers often revert back to how they sold in the past.

DetractorsDrivers

Action

Attributes

Action PlansGoals

MethodProcess



Can do

Will do

and

and

and

and

What to do

Key components




Too often training can be boring and confusing. It can be unclear how to apply strategies and sellers are often left unconvinced they should bother trying.

As noted earlier, ES Research estimates that between 85% and 90% of sales training initiatives have no lasting effect beyond 120 days. If a training event itself fails, there’s no positive effect at all. In fact, delivering a poorly designed and poorly received training event has greater negative effects beyond the obvious wasted time. Bad training discourages sellers from participating in future programs, and can have a negative impact on sales team morale.16

When training is boring, not applicable, not at the right level, and too focused on lecture versus practice, participants don’t engage (Fig. 6).

No engagement = no learning = no behavior change.

For training events themselves, companies have to get the content right and engage their teams with instructors they can respect. Trainers must also use appropriate adult learning devices such as role plays, case studies, simulations, exercises, video, and other interactions (Fig. 7). Otherwise, not only will training fail, it’ll be more difficult to get anyone back in the room for the next go round.

Failure to Deliver Training that Engages5

Figure 6. Poor Pre-Training and Training Activities Lead to Virtually No Results

Figure 7. Effective Pre-Training and Training Activities Lead to a Big Bump in Results

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If you don’t reinforce training and do it with enough rigor (most don’t), even good training is likely to fail eventually (Fig. 8). Months after a sales training initiative, sellers too often say:

+ I don’t remember what was covered in the sales training program

+ I don’t know enough to use the tools and apply the advice

+ I didn’t get enough practice to feel confident enough to give it a try

+ I tried something and it didn’t work…not sure if I did it wrong

+ I’m pretty sure the powers that be don’t remember that this was a priority anyway

Most sales training is focused around a two- or three-day event where sellers learn and practice new skills. The problem with event-only training is that the effects of the event fade. Even if positive effects are seen initially, four months later results and behaviors go right back to where they started before the training.

Reinforce Training for Lasting Impact

Adult learning is an ongoing process. Only through repetition and practice will your sales team internalize the training and put it to use consistently. Let’s assume a sales training event is well received. After the event, you can either build on its effectiveness, or let it fade (Fig. 9 on the next page).

Failure to Make Learning Stick and Transfer6

Figure 8. Poor Reinforcement Leads to Reduced Impact of Training Over Time

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• No motivation enhancement• No concept reinforcement• No complementary learning• No action plans and reviews• No practice & feedback• No technology embedding• No expectation reinforcement

2 4 6 8 10 12 14

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In fact, “Best-in-class companies outpace laggards by nearly a two-times factor in providing post-training reinforcement of the best practices commonly learned in classroom-style instructor-led sales education sessions. These firms have learned that long-term success depends on underscoring the best practices in sales training deployments…”17

And the reinforcement makes a difference in results (Fig. 10).

The concept that learning needs to be reinforced won’t be much of a news flash for most readers. Still, strong post-training reinforcement is the exception in sales training. For those companies that insert reinforcement that works, it makes a tremendous difference in sales training effectiveness and sales results.

Figure 9. What’s Possible with the Right Preparation, Delivery, and Reinforcement Activities

• Motivation enhancement• Concept reinforcement• Complementary learning• Action plans and reviews• Practice & feedback• Technology embedding• Expectation reinforcement

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2 4 6 8 10 12 14

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ment

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Figure 10. Impact of Reinforcement in 835 Organizations that Recently Employed Sales Training

Source: Aberdeen Group, February 2011

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Quota

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Sales Cycle Reduction

Reinforcement Users

Non-users of Reinforcement




These won’t be the most exciting topics to many readers, but that doesn’t make them any less important.

Most companies implement sales training in order to increase revenue. Selling (like anything else) is a process with a series of identifiable and measurable inputs and outputs. If you can improve process efficiency (getting more things done) and effectiveness (getting things done with greater success), you can improve the eventual output, in this case, revenue.

Evaluating Sales Has Its Advantages

Those companies that do evaluate sales performance systematically have a number of advantages:

+ They can measure the effect of sales training and performance improvement initiatives

+ They can improve sales strategies and rollout successes across the team

+ They can remove ineffective sales strategies and training components in favor of those working better

+ They can shorten learning curves, and get new sellers producing faster than before

+ They can improve continuously The evaluation process itself also has a positive effect on sales results. Customer renewal rates, deal size, team achievement of quota, and seller achievement of quota are all positively impacted by performance management processes.19

Without effective training and sales performance evaluation processes, sales training can fail simply because companies have no idea if it has succeeded. Moreover, without an evaluation process, it’s nearly impossible to hold sellers accountable for changing and improving behavior, or for taking actions and achieving results.

No evaluation system = no accountability.

Implemented in the right way, sales performance evaluation analytics can be the source of significant competitive advantage. In fact, 67% more best-in-class companies have sales analytics than laggards.20

As Tom Davenport noted in Competing on Analytics, “Organizations are competing on analytics not just because they can—business today is awash in data crunchers—but also because they should. At a time when firms in many industries offer similar products and use comparable technologies, business processes are among the last remaining points of differentiation. And analytics competitors wring every last drop of value from those processes.”21

Failures of Evaluation, Accountability, and Continuous Improvement7

Only 9% of organizations evaluate behavioral change and 7% evaluate organizational results stemming from training initiatives.18




Employ analytics and you’ll be able to join an elite club: companies that actually succeed with continuous improvement. When everything comes together, you’ll have sellers who:

+ Can do

+ Will do, and do well

+ Know what to do

+ Get it done and keep getting better (Fig. 11)

Without evaluation, accountability, and continuous improvement, sales

training and sales performance improvement can never be completely

effective.

Figure 11. What Happens When Capability, Attributes, Action, and Evaluation Work Together

DetractorsDrivers

Action

Attributes

Action PlansGoals

MethodProcess

EvaluationContinuous

Improvement Accountability



Can do

Will do

and

and

and

and

and

What to do

Get it done right, and keep

getting better

Key components




Conclusion

The fact is sales training can be an enormous driver of revenue growth. Yet so many sales training dollars go to waste. It doesn’t have to be like this.

At RAIN Group, we’ve been helping organizations implement successful sales training programs that lead to lasting results for over a decade. Our RAIN Sales University (RSU) offers a complete sales training curriculum designed to build the skills and knowledge your team needs to achieve top performance, and your company needs to foster a culture of sales excellence.

RAIN Sales University is built around 5 key tenets:

World Class Sales MethodRAIN SellingSM is a top-rated sales method built to help companies succeed with the complex sale.

Innovative TechnologyEnabled by our online platform, sellers can access learning, tools, and job-aids 24/7. We can integrate with your LMS (or use ours) and CRM systems.

Fast, Efficient ImplementationWe value speed, tailoring, and not reinventing the wheel. RSU provides the foundation that you can quickly and easily add on to.

Complete Learning SystemRSU gives you access to our suite of world-class sales training programs covering the gamut of sales topics. Learning happens over time to drive real behavior change and performance improvement.

Flexible and CustomizableRSU is designed for flexible delivery and customizable content and programs from light tailoring to from-scratch development.

If you want to implement a sales training program that leads to real behavior change and results, RAIN Group can help. Contact us to learn more about RAIN Sales University and to walk through a demo of a custom RSU environment.

CONTACT US

Phone: 508-405-0438Email: [email protected]: www.raingroup.com




Notes1. Dave Stein, Sales Training: The 120-Day Curse (ES Research Group, 2011).

2. “Outsourced Sales Training Worldwide: Examining the Major Markets” (ES Research Group, 2013).

3. Dave Stein, Sales Training.

4. R. Erffmeyer, K.R. Russ, and J. Hair, Jr., “Needs Assessment and Evaluation in Sales-Training Programs,” (Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management, 1991).

5. Aberdeen Group defines “best in class” as companies in the top 20%, employing practices that are significantly superior to the industry average, and which result in top industry performance.

6. Mollie Lombardi, Assessments 2013: Finding the Perfect Match (Aberdeen Group, 2013), 8.

7. Mike Schultz and John Doerr, What Sales Winners Do Differently (RAIN Group, 2013).

8. Peter Ostrow, Optimizing Lead-to-Win: Shrinking the Sales Cycle and Focusing Closers on Sealing More Deals (Aberdeen Group, 2010).

9. Peter Ostrow, Train, Coach, Reinforce (Aberdeen Group, 2012), 4.

10. Mark P. Leach, Annie H. Liu, and Wesley J. Johnston, “The Role of Self-Regulation Training in Developing the Motivation Mangement Capabilities of Sellers,” (Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management, 2005).

11. L.M. Spencer, Jr. and S.M. Spencer, Competence at Work: Models for Superior Performance (John Wiley and Sons, 1993).

12. Dave Kurlan, Baseline Selling (AuthorHouse, 2005).

13. Peter Ostrow, Train, Coach, Reinforce.

14. Robert B. Cialdini, “Harnessing the Science of Persuasion,” Harvard Business Review (2001): 76, accessed January 3, http://hbr.org/product/harnessing-the-science-of-persuasion/an/R0109D-PDF-ENG.

15. Mike Schultz and John Doerr, The 5 Roles of High-Performing Sales Coaches (RAIN Group, 2013).

16. George M. Alliger, Scott I. Tannenbaum, Winston Bennett, Jr., Holly Traver, and Allison Shotland, “A Meta-Analysis of the Relations Among Training Criteria,” (Personnel Psychology, 1997).

17. Peter Ostrow, Sales Training.

18. Mark E. Van Buren and William Erskine, “The 2002 ASTD State of the Industry Report,” (American Society of Training and Development, 2002).

19. Peter Ostrow, “Advanced Sales Training Deployments,” (Aberdeen Group, 2011).

20. Peter Ostrow, “Reaching Sales Quota More Consistently,” (Aberdeen Group, 2010).

21. Thomas H. Davenport, “Competing on Analytics,” (Harvard Business Review, 2006).


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About RAIN Group

Unleash the Sales Potential of Your Team with RAIN Group

RAIN Group is a sales training, assessment, and performance improvement company that helps leading organizations improve sales results. We’ve helped hundreds of thousands of sellers, managers, and professionals in more than 34 countries increase their sales significantly with our RAIN SellingSM methodology. We can help you:

Locations

AMERICAS • EMEA • ASIA-PACIFIC

Connect with Us

Implement World-class Sales CoachingWe coach sellers, professionals, and leaders individually and in groups to achieve the greatest and fastest increase in sales results. And we train and certify leaders and managers in our RAIN Sales Coaching system. Often, it’s RAIN Sales Coaching that truly unlocks the team’s potential, and keeps them motivated to produce the best results consistently.

Identify Who Can and Will Sell with Great SuccessOur assessments measure sales attributes and skills, identifying the factors that really make a difference in sales performance. Whether you’re looking to hire someone who can and will sell, or looking to improve sales performance, we’ll help you build the most successful sales team.

Find out more about how RAIN Group can help you unleash the sales potential of your team by visitingRAINGroup.com or calling (508) 405-0438.

RAIN Group’s Clients

Grow Your Key AccountsAt most companies, there’s a huge, untapped opportunity to add more value – and thus sell more – to existing accounts. We help our clients capitalize on these revenue growth opportunities. Whether it’s simply increasing cross-selling and up-selling or implementing a major strategic account management program, we can help.

Implement Sales Training that Delivers Real ResultsRAIN Group’s sales training system inspires real change and delivers real results that last. Our rigorous approach includes sales team evaluation, customized training programs, robust reinforcement, and coaching to help you and your team develop sales skills in each of the Three Levels of RAIN Selling, and maximize your results.


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