The Sales Process has Changed September 15, 2011

Majority of Sales Training Programs Are Designed to Fail June 24, 2011

If my 25+ years of experience have taught me anything, it is that sales training programs can be a costly waste if not handled correctly.  For years, I’ve been analyzing the costs and efficiencies of different training programs and approaches and, ultimately, looking for the right program that will be embraced by my peers and trainees and make that behavioral and cultural change that was promised to meet my expectations.  I’ve been to some of the best seminars/workshops in the world, so when I glance around my office I see book shelves filled with training materials that encompass everything from the latest best practices to hundreds of CDs and tapes that focus on expanding current relationships and generating new business.

Now when speaking of “sales,” I am referring to the larger sales that often require long sales cycles and multiple decision-makers.  Many of us have incorporated strategies such as the Harvard’s Mutual Gain Theory to foster a win-win environment/relationship.  This approach has a very different process and attitude compared to a distributed sales approach or a zero-sum game strategy; so with that premise let’s discuss why many larger sales training strategies programs are designed to fail.

In my early years as a sales representative, my then management team would outsource a yearly or bi-yearly training initiative usually associated with our annual sales meeting.  I’m sure their intentions were good.  The management team always provided fairly well known facilitators or speakers—the guru of the day or a renowned training company.  These workshops could last from 4 hours to 3 days, with the goal of fixing any sales problems.  Having attended the workshops, we were then expected to make the necessary changes to our personal approaches, which in turn would increase our sales.  The general sense was that if a particular territory wasn’t generating business or meeting the goals set for that region, blame fell on the salesperson or his manager.

And during the workshop everything sounded great.  These strategies and new techniques seemed logical, and I was convinced that many of them would accomplish exactly what was being promised (X amount of revenue or X % of new business).  Yet time after time my expectations were never met.  I would work courageously to implement these new changes/techniques, but for one reason or another I wasn’t getting the dramatic, promised results.

For one thing, I don’t recall ever having the opportunity to respond to any surveys before or during the workshops to judge or get any insight on what areas we sales folks would like to work on; nor do I remember our sales process ever being audited, questioned, or discussed in any depth.

As I became more experienced, I realized that these new techniques/programs didn’t consider the emotional or people-side of the equation.  Further, the new strategies did not address the infrastructure required to implement these new processes or programs (e.g., the management team wasn’t previously trained in these new techniques and only had an intellectual understanding at best; so there wasn’t anyone with true experience in these new techniques to help us through the change).

And after following up in six months after the original off-the-shelf workshop, my sales teams had only implemented a fraction of the proposed new techniques.  The yearly sales forecasts with mapped-out strategies and plans often didn’t look any different than they did before the training.  When we facilitated quarterly performance review, the results were disappointing at best.  We needed a team to manage these new programs/techniques and most of us don’t have those resources available.

Another impediment is that change is never easy, let alone embraced by everyone involved.  Furthermore, implementing change is time consuming, and my quota was still staring me in the face.  And as a matter of fact, the top 10% of us were very happy with our numbers, so why should we embrace this change at all?  For us the current approaches were somewhat successful already.  Sure, everyone was on board during a sales meeting or the training sessions.  That’s typical.  However, we are commissioned sales representatives, not administrators, so what’s the incentive for us to make this change?  Let’s take an honest look at this!

As I got into upper management, I started auditing our sales processes and used tools such as SWAT analysis to discover that the majority of our approaches were very defined and strategic.  Initially, I had difficulty identifying some of the weakness that could be redressed (managing the process/white-space, outlines with cascaded phases of new development, appropriate time-line commitments, supporting documentation, and strategic budgets that included projected results with best practices in delivery).

I discovered that we could polish our current approach rather than change to a new sales technique or strategy.  We just needed to understand what we were doing and determine the incremental changes to bring about improvement. However, we do not always see ourselves clearly, so the challenge became how to obtain an objective view of the sales process and approach.

A strategy for objectivity emerged:  Interviewing multiple people inside and outside our organization, conducting surveys, examining comparative case studies, and analyzing our current training content and process.  This approach substantially reduced the cost and time it took before we started to see a return for our training investment.

So implementing off-the-shelf training programs (and this includes companies that claim to bring in custom materials, but rarely understand your business or sales processes) is often not a good solution.  And the cost of taking a sales team off the road and providing  training that is more entertainment than practical solution is another downside of trying to replace the whole sales strategy as opposed to refining a current approach.

In reviewing the cost and efforts of our new approach, we saw that this incremental polishing approach was less expensive than implementing a new sales strategy and managing the process to ensure its success.  In addition, this incremental polishing approach was less stressful for many of the departments involved (i.e., field sales, inside sales, sales support, and management).

I’ve tried for years to accomplish this research internally, but was always interrupted for one reason or another (e.g., time restraints, funding, egos, being too close to the problem, etc.).  Then in 2003 I cofounded University Connections, LLC and made working with companies to help them improve their sales approach one of our priorities.  The success of our improvement programs depends on our understanding of our client’s business and tailoring the sales improvements to those needs–never just grabbing something off the shelf and claiming that we have the magic bullet.

In short, auditing or polishing your current approach will probably be the cost effective way to reach your goals.  The less-is-more strategy will increase your sales revenue and this less volatile approach to new sales techniques will be embraced by your staff.  Hence this is the approach we support and implement at University Connections, LLC.

Check out this link www.university-connections.com/sales_marketing.html