What’s going on here?

• Sales training has been around for more than 100 years.  Yet every year, new approaches appear with the promise of being “The Silver Bullet.”  Old approaches—even those that are relevant to fixing the proble—are labeled “old-school,” and rejected.
• On Amazon.com there are 29, 469 books under the category of “How to Sell.”  In “Sales Techniques” there are 11, 194.
• I’m personally tracking 80 blogs about selling.  There are many more.  Dozens provide solid advice.
• There are several hundred sales training firms ESR is aware of, yet there is no single one or two that dominate, as you would see in any other industry.
• In 2008, U.S. corporations spent around $6 billion on sales performance improvement, yet sales productivity (pre-recession) was down.
• The number of free webinars focused on improving sales capabilities is at an all-time high, and increasing.  So are free articles, eBooks and white papers.
• Reports, statistics, surveys, research and opinion related to sales ineffectiveness are abound.  Here are just a few sources: CSO Insights, Forrester, Sirius Decisions, The Sales Executive Council, Selling Power, Sales and Marketing Management magazine, most of the major sales training companies, and of course, ESR.  You can find anything you need to know about the subject among these sources.
• There continue to be emerging movements with value propositions focused on sales performance improvement.  The latest is Sales 2.0.  Add the new online social media to the list.
• There is no shortage of associations and groups focused on sales performance: SMT (The Professional Society for Sales & Marketing Training), ASTD’s Sales Training Drivers, UPSA, SAMA (focused on Strategic Account Management, an advanced selling discipline), SMEI, The Sales Management Association, USEF (The University Sales Education Foundation), and a dozen or more groups on LinkedIn.

What’s my point?  The root causes of sales ineffectiveness are clear.   There is plenty of sound advice about how to fix the problem.   There is a proven path.  The answers are there for everyone to see.   There are companies you can read about and observe that have achieved sales excellence.

So, recession aside, why is sales as a profession and function, losing ground?

Let me know your thoughts, please.

Photo credit: © dragon_fang – Fotolia.com

I received my regular opt-in email from BNET this afternoon.  The subject was, “Discussion: Why Industry Analysts are Sales Tools.”

Hey, I thought, that looks like it would be interesting!  So I open the message and I see this link: Industry Analysts… from an Analyst.

Now this really looks interesting.  So I click.  Turns out it’s a comment I wrote on Geoffrey James’s blog 18 months ago.

I’ve written about Geoffrey before.  He’s a great writer, has plenty of guts and he’s salesguy through and through.  And, he understands the analyst business.  Big plus.

(At the moment Geoffrey’s having quite a back-and-forth with another BNET blogger.  Check it out and pile on as you see fit. )

Whether you’re a sales executive or in sales training, you do need to consider industry analysts as sales tools.   In the past I helped a number of companies figure this out and then watch them excel at leveraging the analysts that covered their markets.  By the way, analyst relations falls under marketing.  If it’s not getting done, or getting done right, just walk down the hall and start asking why.

From my position as an sales training industry analyst, few sales training company executives really understand how to leverage us.  ESR’s principal analyst, Al Case, wrote a terrific report a while back, but only a handful executives of companies we’ve spoken with have actually read the thing.  Many get on the phone with us for briefings and wind up squandering what should have been a great opportunity.

If you’re a sales trainer and want to bring ESR up to speed on what you do, please learn a bit about analysts first and how we work.

Each year ESR publishes its annual Sales Training Vendor Guide.

The 2008 Guide, which was published last December, compares and contrasts 19 leading sales training providers across many different capabilities such as depth and breadth of offering, program effectiveness, educational design, available customization, post-program reinforcement, learning technology support and measurement.

Although the 2008 Guide came in at 170 pages, the ESR/Arena (right) was, for many, the highlight of the report.  With appropriate deference to the Gartner Magic Quadrant, we designed the ESR/Arena to provide a quick, graphical perspective for those who would read the report.

We released a standalone copy of the ESR/Arena early in 2008. We found that some buyers of sales training were leaning toward making decisions about vendor selection based solely upon a single glance at the Arena.  We’re certainly delighted that they have that degree of trust in us, but that is precisely the wrong way to go about such a critical decision.

Selecting the right sales training company—the right way—is a process.  There are no shortcuts.  The foundation, and most critical component of the process, is a comprehensive assessment of the selling company’s situation.  I’m not talking about a quick, “The reps need training in cold-calling,” or “They need to get higher in the customer’s organization.”  Hundreds of millions of dollars a year are wasted on training based upon such short-sighted and matter-of-fact statements.  I know.  Performing postmortems on failed sales training interventions is part of what we do at ESR.  And now is a really bad time to spend money getting your people trained only to find that there has been no measurable improvement.

Now that I’ve offered that disclaimer you can take a look at the 2008 ESR/Arena. (Click on the graphic for full size.)  There are a few things for you to keep in mind:

• This graphic is a year old.  A number of vendors have gone through changes during the past year.
• There are eight additional vendors that ESR has included in our coverage that are not represented in the 2008 ESR/Arena.  (Here is a complete list.)
• There are literally hundreds of other training firms, from one person to many, that could very well be the right one to meet your company’s training requirements.  Your perfect partner may very well not even be on this chart.
• No single vendor that ESR covers is right for every company.  It’s your job, not theirs to make sure you’ve selected the right one.

ESR’s 2009 Sales Training Vendor Guide will be published early in the year.  It will include 26 vendors and considerably more information about training programs, CRM integration, Sales 2.0 technology, and other critical capabilities than previous Guides.

I recently had an enlightening conversation with Walter Rogers (CEO) and Lawne Gerhardt (VP of Global Sales) at Baker Communications.  ES Research hasn’t covered Baker because they weren’t a pure sales training play—sales training content makes up about half of their broad array of course offerings.  You might not have heard of Baker.  Even Walter admits they’ve been under the radar screen.  (Disclosure: Baker has purchased ESR’s research.) 

The Houston-based company is 30 years old.  It was formed in the late 1970’s to meet the sales training needs of Conoco.  Baker was originally a sales training-only firm, targeting the energy sector and winding up in the unenviable position of having Enron as their biggest customer.

In 1990 Walter joined Baker.  He started targeting the technology sector, going after Apple, IBM, and Cray among others.  Baker won a deal for providing training for IBM—a part of their highly successful win-back program.  Walter then turned the company’s attention to the other high growth sectors.

Baker has grown substantially over the past four years. Technology is their largest market. That’s followed by energy, financial services, energy, and health care. They claim 800 active customers, 300 training events a month globally, of which 150 are sales-related.

What surprised me was their change in philosophical approach four years ago when they shifted to looking at alternatives to classroom-based training.  (If you are a regular reader of this blog, you’ll know how that is all changing.)  Visiting Baker Communications’ website doesn’t provide that perspective at all.

Walter established a relationship with WebEx whereby they provide Baker tools and guidance supporting WebEx customers’ sales processes.  That relationship has expanded since Cisco acquired WebEx.

Understanding that most companies don’t have a formal process, Walter took me through how Baker helps companies build a sales process and layer in training and ongoing reinforcement to achieve their client’s performance improvement goals and objectives.  What is unusual is Baker’s approach to an integrated and aligned sales and marketing process for building a highly qualified pipeline.   I’ve not seen a training company take this approach.

Walter took me through their work with one very large staffing company client and how Baker drove the reconfiguring of the company’s sales approach and sales process to enable them to adapt to customer demands in a new market. 

Walter is a smart guy.  He understands the challenges his customers are facing with regard to funding for sales training and is taking the company in the right direction.

Note:  ESR has not yet formally evaluated Baker Communications, so let the sales training buyer beware.

Photo:  © Eray Haciosmanoglu – Fotolia.com

Jim Dickie and Barry Trailer, our colleagues over at CSO Insights, are currently in the process of launching their 15^th annual Sales Performance Optimization study, the past results from which have been regularly featured in Harvard Business Review, Business Week, Entrepreneur Magazine, Selling Power Magazine, Inc., CRM Magazine, etc.  We at ES Research have also presented some of their key findings in our articles.  In fact, we have a feature article in the November/December issue of Sales and Marketing Management magazine, where we make specific recommendations based upon the results of their current report.

As we feel this information is very valuable to sales and marketing executives, we would like to invite you to take part in the CSO Insights new survey and in return be able to tap into the insights of your peers to optimize the performance of your organization when the new 200+ page report is published in January, 2009.

In appreciation for taking part in this study, you will:

• Be able to access CSO Insights’ new reports on Sales 2.0: Hype, Hope, or Happening upon completing the survey.
• Receive the 2008 Lead Generation Optimization report; highlighting the areas where companies are achieving the best ROI from their lead generation investments, sent to your email address.
• Receive a complimentary copy the full 2009 Sales Performance Optimization report from CSO Insights when it is released early next year.

To take part in this project click on the following:  CSO Insights 2009 Sales Performance Study Link

Questions on this survey can be directed to Kim Cameron, Executive Director of Research, CSO Insights: kim.cameron@csoinsights.com.

It's no wonder that no matter how articulate your salespeople are, they still don't get much respect from their customer.

Last week I wrote a post about the panel I was on with Bill Friend.  I referenced my colleague Olin Thompson.  Olin is somewhat of a genius when it comes to sales and marketing strategy.  At the present time he is VP of Strategy at Lawson Software. 

For a number of years Olin ran the “Credibility Forum” for sales and marketing executives of ERP software companies.  Olin tackled the issue of salespeoples’ lack of credibility with customer C-level executives and, with a few slides, accurately depicted the challenge and posed a number of solutions.

Before we get into solutions, let’s take a look at Olin’s slide.  The Y-(vertical) axis represents the messenger—either the seller’s employee (salesperson, non-salesperson and executive), a third-party, like an industry analyst firm, consultant or the press (unknown to the customer, known, and trusted) and another customer (unknown to the target customer, known, and trusted by the target customer).  Notice that credibility increases from bottom to top. That means that, as a source of information, an executive from a company other than yours that your prospect knows of and trusts is considerably more credible than an executive from your company.

The X-axis is the medium, either internal (spoken/verbal, a brochure or a white paper) or an external media source, such as analyst reports, articles or presentations, that are unknown to the target customer, known or trusted.  With respect to sources of information, credibility increases from left to right.  So an article about your company in Fortune magazine is far more credible than the best brochure or white paper you could ever produce.

Olin asks his audience, “Where is your most frequent and least controllable market contact?”  From the customer’s perspective, the lowest credibility is at the lower-left corner of this matrix.  It’s the salesrep speaking with the customer!

Olin’s message to the participants was that they must spend time and money supplementing internally-produced marketing materials with customer testimonials, reference visits, case studies, placements in trusted media, positive mentions by analysts in their reports, advertising in trusted industry and business magazines, etc. 

Here’s the take-away.  Unless you’re one of the top three companies in your industry, training your sales team to deliver messages about your company, products, and unique value will only take you so far.  You’ve got to provide ongoing credibility support from multiple external sources as well.  This doesn’t happen without planning, funding, staffing and effective execution.  It’s another in a long list of reasons that the sales and marketing functions must get aligned.

Authentic and balanced insight or just plain propaganda?

I wrote a post a while back about white papers.  I said, “In most cases, white papers are marketing documents rather than the unbiased analyses they appear to be.”

The same can be said for a subset of marketing collateral labeled “Sponsored Research.”

There are three prominent flavors of non-academic, sponsored research:

1. Legitimate sponsored research.  A corporation (or more than one) funds some or all of an independent research project.  The research is sound and not manipulated or skewed in any way.  The funding entity benefits by having a quality fulfillment piece to drive targeted visitors to their site.  The research firm gets their project funded and has that research distributed by a company with presumably a much larger audience. An example of this is Salesforce.com and Kadient’s sponsorship (along with other entities) of CSO Insight’s annual research report. 
   

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2. Sponsored research about a vendor.  A vendor pays a research firm to write a report that positions the vendor in an advantageous position versus their competitors.  Unfortunately this is a common practice in the IT industry and is growing in other industries as well. The problem, of course, is that the reader assumes that the research was done by an independent research organization, considers what is said in the report as fact, and then makes decisions based upon what they learned. 
   

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3. White papers positioned as research reports. The functions of a vendor-written white paper and a research report (presumed to be written by an independent authority) have been deliberately blended for the very purpose of manipulating the opinions of prospective buyers.  Take for example this page.  The URL is findwhitepapers.com. The title of the webpage is “Technology Research for Business Professionals.”  The heading on the page says “Popular Research Reports.”  I didn’t look at every page, but the ones I did have vendor-written white papers exclusively.  It’s self-serving propaganda.  Nothing more, nothing less. 

On the other hand, some firms won’t play the game.  Burton Group, a technology research firm has this on their site:

“Since our founding in 1990, we have not published vendor-sponsored research of any kind. We cover relevant vendors and products without regard for vendors’ subscription to our services. We maintain complete independence from vendor agendas, providing unbiased assessments of markets, vendors, and products…”

Several years ago, Forrester Research announced that they would no longer perform vendor-sponsored research. 

My warning to you:  If you are in the market for sales training, sales consulting, or technology-enabled selling tools, and you are reading whatever you can get your hands on to help with your decision, make sure you understand 1) who wrote the piece, 2) what they are selling, and most importantly, 3) if the information that is presented is independent of any vendor’s agenda.

(Full disclosure: My firm, ES Research Group, independently evaluates sales performance improvement programs and tools as well as the vendors that provide them.)

Help me through this logic, please.

Ann All (with ITBusinessEdge.com) posted an entry in her blog today about the optimistic outlook for CRM sales.  She wrote, “Datamonitor, KensingtonHouse, CSO Insights and Gartner are among the companies with an optimistic outlook on CRM.”  She then added AMR Research to the list.

I won’t dispute the prediction. 

What I will say is that progress is painfully slow with respect to CRM meeting the requirements of salespeople.  Help me through this logic, please: 

• CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management, right? 
• Sales, Customer Care, Marketing and Finance managers all need their reports from the CRM system to do their jobs managing customers, right?
• Who inputs a fair amount, if not most of the data?  Salespeople, right? 
• They have to be prodded, threatened, incentivized and shamed into keeping their information up to date, right?
• Follow me on this, please.  If the salespeople don’t sell anything, there aren’t going to be customers and customer relationships for a CRM system to manage, right?
• So, why isn’t there anything in it for the salespeople?  In fact, don’t most of your salespeople use your company’s CRM system for little more than basic contact management? 
• So why does the task of keeping the CRM system up to date at the expense of their selling time make any sense at all? 
• Why don’t the CRM companies design systems help salespeople sell more?  Because salespeople aren’t their customers.  Management is.

What we need is more companies like White Springs and The TAS Group that understand the size and the impact of the CRM problem and are providing solutions.  And we also need CRM companies to start adding capabilities that will contribute to, rather than hinder, a sales person’s ability to sell.  When that happens I guess we should call it CRM 2.0.

Too many companies (especially SMEs–small to medium-size enterprises) have either no formal analyst relations function or one that is managed by someone who is not qualified for the job. An approach like that leaves those companies unprepared for the ongoing and very competitive battles for positioning that take place within some industries.

How a company manages their analyst relations function can be the difference between no coverage (or much worse, negative positioning) and having the powerful endorsement for your company and products from an influential industry analyst. Sales people will tell you that a positive analyst report makes some aspects of selling so much easier.

Analyst relations professionals we know have the experience to be able to answer these and other critical questions:

1. What are the ten deadly sins NOT to commit when working with an industry analyst firm?
2. What are the typical characteristics of an industry analyst that will enable you to more effectively work with him or her?
3. As a vendor, when should you be humble and when should you position yourself as an expert?
4. Does subscribing to an analyst’s research improve coverage of your products or company?
5. How are research briefs created and what impact can a vendor have on their content?
6. What are the three highest-level benefits you can enjoy from an effective analyst relations approach?
7. How can you best capitalize on industry analyst “rules of engagement?”
8. Precisely what homework must you do before you brief an analyst?
9. How do vision and ability to execute relate to how an analyst sees your company?
10. During a briefing, how do CEOs, VPs of sales, PR firms and VPs of marketing impact how an analyst sees your company?

The technology sector is most familiar with industry analysts (Gartner, Forrester, Meta, etc.), You’ll find them in other markets as well, e.g. Frost & Sullivan, KLAS,  JD Powers, Jane’s (and, of course, ES Research Group).

Here’s a start: Consider the leading analyst firm that covers your industry to be the most important strategic account your company has. If you view the relationship in that way, you’re moving in the right direction.