What Is a Sales Engineer Worth?

In my recent post about the fragmented sales training industry I wrote about the hundreds of smaller sales training/consulting shops out there.  Salesengineering.com is one worth noting. (ESR published a piece on them a while back when they were still TechSellEnts). 

The reason I’m excited about them today is their most recent newsletter with presents a case study quantifying the business impact of SEs (sales engineers). 

There are two messages here:

1. SEs are a critical part of any sales team that sell technical or technology products.  They provide far more value than just doing demos.  To ignore them is to limit your company’s revenue potential.  SEs can make the difference between winning and losing.  Their work can have an impact on many other aspects of the sale including the level of discounting.
2. Salesengineering.com’s Joe Winthrop and Phil Janus are smart.  They understand that quantifying the business value they deliver to their clients differentiates them from many of the other firms that may profess to deliver the same results.  We spoke to their clients.  They really do what they claim in this case study.

There are sales performance improvement providers that will stand behind an ROI.  There are even some that will guarantee results. If you’re shopping, ask the vendors how they quantify the value they’ll provide to your company if you engage with them.  Their response to that question will reveal a lot.

Event-Based vs. Extended Learning

Yesterday I interviewed Tom Roth (CEO) and Ed Emde (SVP) from Wilson Learning as part of my sales thought-leader podcast series.  (Click the tab at the top of the page to see the podcasts that we’ve already published.  They’re free!)

Every reputable sales trainer and training firm knows that a stand-alone training event doesn’t deliver in significant, long-term, sustainable value.  Tom quoted a study that found only 15% of what is learned in a classroom program is retained after 30 days.  ESR has performed research that validates this as well.

It’s the post-program learning reinforcement that extends the learning over months, quarters and years beyond the live training event.  And that’s what extends the performance improvement past the 30-, 60- or 90-day bump that we see with isolated training events.

Live training still plays a critical role in a strategic, sales performance improvement initiative.  But the live training event is only one of many integrated components required for success.

If You Believe That, I’ve Got a Bridge to Sell You!

Whether it’s snide remarks about the Brooklyn Bridge, selling refrigerators in Alaska, used cars, snake oil, aluminum siding, or Willy Loman, sales professionals have a long, long way to go before we get the respect we deserve.

Glengarry Glen Ross (1992) grossed $10 million in the U.S.  Watch this seven-minute clip (only if you aren’t offended by four-letter words) and you can begin to understand how salespeople are seen by much of the population, including some of the very businesspeople to whom you are selling. 

Personally, I cringe whenever I view this scene. I consulted with a company that employed a regional VP of sales who had many of Blake’s negative attributes, although he wasn’t nearly as horrible.  He was fired for cause during my engagement.

Even Will Rogers got into the fray with, “I’d rather be the man who bought the Brooklyn Bridge than the one who sold it.”  I guess he’s saying he’d rather be an honest patsy then a dishonest salesperson.  That makes sense, but did he have to raise the Brooklyn Bridge thing to demonstrate his finer attributes?  (Reminds me of the old, “Do you still beat your dog?”)

I’m proud to be associated with nearly every sales person and sales leader I know and work with.  Sure, B2B sales has its share of lazy, incompetent and dishonest people.  So does nearly every profession.  And although there are people in sales just for the money or because they haven’t been successful at anything else, for the most part, we’re an honest, hard-working group.

So what are you doing to elevate the opinion people have about us? 

The Fragmented Sales Training Industry

I get calls periodically from private equity fund managers and other investment bankers about the demographics of the sales training industry.  Journalists I speak with are interested in it as well. 

What’s so noteworthy?  The degree of fragmentation of the sales training industry.  It’s certainly not the most fragmented.  Law firms are considerably more so, for example, with Baker & McKenzie topping the list at 3,300 or so lawyers.  Here’s a fact: 50% of the 1.14 million lawyers in the U.S. are practicing alone.

With lawyers, your requirements will determine which lawyer (or law firm) best matches your requirements.  Certainly defending Microsoft against a $1.3 billion fine levied by the European Commission isn’t a job for your average storefront lawyer.  And you don’t need a $750 per hour senior partner to incorporate your sole proprietor sales training business.  The same goes for buying sales consulting and training.

Think about it, though.  You’ve got AchieveGlobal at $100 million or so (even though they aren’t a pure-play sales training company).  Wilson comes in at around $60 million.  When you study at the top 25, as I do, it doesn’t take long before you understand you’re down in the single-digit millions.  And you’ve got many hundreds of one- and two-person shops who may be doing business now and then with some of the Fortune 500.

There are no 800-lb. gorillas in the sales training industry. No vendor has claimed that space, although several are pushing hard in that direction. 

Think Twice About That Promotion!

Jim Brodo, Senior VP of Marketing from Richardson, asked if I would contribute some content to their newsletter.  I went back over some of what I wrote over the past year or so, and rediscovered a piece on promoting top sales reps to management positions.

This is an important issue for both the sales person and the executive  considering promoting that rep.  Here’s the bottom line:  the skills and traits for success in a sales management position overlap but are very different for success in a direct selling role.  That means that if that salesrep, no matter how well they have performed, does not possess the specific skills and traits required for success in that management job, they are likely going to fail. 

I know that executives are faced with a tough decision when a top salesrep comes to them demanding a management position.  I’ve spent a fair amount of time working with reps and managers on that very issue over the years.

By the time this situation occurs, it is usually too late for a positive outcome.  The salesrep may have told her colleagues or family about their plan and staying in their current position may not be any longer possible.  (When this situation does occur, it’s a sign that effective career counseling within the person’s company has likely not taken place.

Sales Training Companies from a Unique Perspective (Part 2)

Before I go any further, let me again state that there are a lot of effective, high value, ethical sales training companies out there.  They have long lists of customers who have managed to dramatically improve their teams’ sales performance.

Stealing

Let me dig a bit into a point I made in Part 1—the fact that some sales training companies steal content from their competitors. 

At a SAMA conference a while back I sat in disbelief during a vendor presentation.  Nearly every slide was duplicated, verbatim, from another vendor whose content I was very familiar with.  What made matters worse is the presenter used the same anecdotes and examples to make his point as the founder of the other company from whom the content was pirated.  I know where it originated, since I had heard the founder of that other company use those same anecdotes and examples at least 10 years before.

What impact does this have on the sales training industry?  It can’t be good.  The content pirates could be little more than parrots—lip synching someone else’s ideas, strategies and approaches, without providing the process framework, tools and educational design for real learning.  Or, the most innovative vendors might decide that they don’t want to compete on innovation any longer.  That wouldn’t be good either.

What Versus How

The Sales Enablement Technology Dark Ages: Sales 0.2

As we continue to dig deeper into the capabilities of the leading sales performance improvement companies, we’re not encouraged by some of what we’re seeing in the area of sales enablement technology.

Through recent engagements where our clients evaluated sales training companies, we listened to double-talk, vendor sales reps ducking questions, and a complete lack of understanding of the issues. (No, these people were not running for President.)

Just to give you an idea:

• When asked how he recommends modeling the client’s sales process in Salesforce.com, a vendor replied, “Well, you can use the comment fields…”
   
• Two vendors had absolutely no response, written or verbal, when asked whether they provide a electronic version of their opportunity management form that somehow connects with the client’s CRM system. Another of the exchanges went like this:

Client: “How do we roll up the projected contract values and dates into a forecast?”  

Vendor: “You can use Excel, like our other customers do.”

Client: “How do we get the data into Excel?”

Vendor: “I’ll have to check with the folks back in the office.”

The message here is what all of us have been saying on this blog. Properly deployed sales enablement technology of all types—not just opportunity management—will come increased efficiencies and effectiveness and competitive advantage. If you’re evaluating a sales training company, make sure they not only understand the issues, but have made measurable progress in the right direction.

Having a few e-Learning modules isn’t Sales 2.0.  It’s not even close.

Conducting Business Over the Phone

I spend a lot of time on the phone.  Yesterday I participated in 11 one-hour calls, including:

• Recording a podcast with Barry Trailer of CSO Insights;
• A call with Al Case, ESR’s Principal Analyst;
• Opportunity reviews with individual sales reps from the company I discussed earlier on this blog;
• A discussion with Mark Morris, the CEO and founder of My Pipeline, a company that initiates long-term relationships for their clients.

I’ve been doing most of my consulting over the phone for the past 11 years. I’ve had a number of long-term clients whom I had never met face-to-face.

There is nothing that has the relationship-building impact of a face-to-face meeting.  But in certain circumstances, a person experienced in conducting business over the phone can definitely get the job done.

A few ideas for getting the most out of conducting business on the phone:

Even More Sales Lessons from the Campaign

If you’re a student of politics as I am, this primary campaign has become really exciting.

Last evening Obama walked away with a big victory.  Clinton supporters will say that he won in North Carolina with fewer votes than the polls two weeks ago suggested he would.  And, that Clinton won Indiana, a neighboring state to Obama’s home state.  And, that he significantly outspent Clinton.  Those are facts.

Obama supporters say according to the rules that Clinton approved when this all started, he’s won.  They say that even with all the brand recognition and charisma Bill Clinton brings to the race, they couldn’t win in North Carolina.  Those are facts as well.

What happened?  I’m not going to pretend I’m a political strategist.  As a sales strategist, I believe that:

1. Clinton continued to go negative on Obama.  She didn’t jump into the fray with the latest Reverend Wright activity, but she continues to discredit Obama in no uncertain terms.  This hurt her.  We learned a long time ago that most buyers don’t like when you go negative on the competition.

Sales Training Companies from a Unique Perspective (Part 1)

I’ve been on all sides of the sales training business:

• Class participant as a sales rep—many different programs over numbers of years;
• Buyer of sales training as a VP of sales;
• Buyer of sales management training;
• Inhouse sales trainer—my own content as well as a reseller for another company;
• Outsourced sales trainer—again, my own content as well as a reseller for another company;
• Author of best-selling sales book;
• And now, a sales training industry researcher and analyst.  In that role I speak with many large and small sales training company CEOs each week.  Some I have interviewed, with many more to come.  I see their proposals to prospects, their presentations, their training classes, and through our network of contacts, hear about their successes and failures.  I’m quite familiar with the business.

With that being said, here are some observations:

Sales Training Companies: The Good News

There are some absolutely terrific sales training companies out there, of all sizes.  Some are well-known and others are far below the radar screen of many who would search for a provider.  Here are just a few high-level points about what they do that delivers value to their customers. The best: 

1. Operate with a high degree of integrity;
2. Invest in their products, services, clients and people. 
3. Walk away from a opportunities where they and the customer won’t be successful;
4. Admit that they aren’t all things to all people;
5. Are short on hype, long on results.

Sales Training Companies: The Bad News