Yesterday during The Top Sales Experts Roundtable, Linda Richardson made a strong case for customized sales training.  It’s not something she has to convince us at ESR about.

Many organizations want a customized sales training experience, whether it be live or virtual.  This can be good or bad, depending upon what experiences and materials are customized, and to what degree. It’s important for sales training buyer to understand any and all customization requirements and objectives; and, it is incumbent upon that person to have an effective strategy for customization.

ESR have yet to find a client who says, “Yes, off-the-shelf training is just fine for my organization.” Every organization feels that it is unique, that its problems are unique, and that only a unique program can maximize their potential.

The Problem

When an organization brings in a sales training company, there is a challenge that the organization is trying to overcome or an opportunity to leverage.

This fundamentally implies that a change is needed—that the status quo is not sufficient to continue to propel sales growth. The sales training company is brought in to effect some change, usually a behavioral change, in the participating sales people, to stimulate that sales growth.

ESR recommends that the first place to look when considering any degree of behavioral change is your sales methodology.  That’s the backbone on which all your processes, tools, training, hiring, measurement system, and sales approach will be built. Fix or replace the methodology first. If you don’t have a methodology, you will need to build one.  (Training your team on how to employ that methodology eventually follows.)  This is an old song, but everyone needs to hear it until they can sing along.

Change vs. Status Quo

By acknowledging the need for change, it’s important to understand the meaning of sales training program customization. There are two types of customization:

1. Tailoring—adapting the training materials to reflect the sales organization’s products, services, sales force characteristics, as well as market and corporate specifics;
2. Modification—altering the intellectual property of the sales training company resulting in different learnings, or modifying the instructional design of the program so that there is a core difference in the way the materials are presented.

Tailoring is almost always useful. Tailoring materials gets your company name in front of the sales people and personalizes the experience. Tailoring can replace canned, generic workshop examples with actual examples from your sales force’s existing pipeline, or recent wins or losses, personalizing the experience and maximizing the probability that the sales person will identify with the program. Tailoring, if limited to phrasing, word usage, workshops and case study examples, is often helpful.

Modification is a two-edged sword. Modification can be helpful if there are processes within your sales organization that you know factually and empirically work, and if you can separate these working best practices from those processes which you know, or suspect, may be constraining your sales growth.

The Risk of Modification

Modification carries a potential risk—LCD—”lowest common denominator.”  There is an observable tendency among course and methodology modifiers, resulting from pressure from certain stakeholders, to fine tune the new methods and processes taught in the course materials to such an extent that they are “devolved” into a mere reflection of the existing, flawed sales methodology. Customizing course materials to make the program “more like our business environment” can effectively negate the original objective of the program, which was to effect behavioral change.

With that in mind, ESR has recognized some leading sales training companies for their very effective approaches to modification.

Avoiding “Devolution”

How do you avoid “devolution” in your customized sales training programs?  Four considerations:

1. Invest in a comprehensive, objective assessment of the performance of your sales team—know very specifically what works and what doesn’t;
2. When documenting and implementing best practices, make sure that you have empirical metrics that denote that those practices do, in fact, stimulate behaviors that increase sales;
3. Evaluate your sales training company’s methods for modification of educational programs;
4. Stick with tailoring of your training provider’s content, assuming you’ve selected the right partner.

Number three is important. Some sales training organizations resist modification of their programs at all.  Some have a core set of learnings that are assembled and designed around a study of your organization’s best practices. Others have designed proprietary systems or methodologies for modifying course materials that are specifically designed to maximize the value of nomenclature tailoring, while minimizing the probability that the structural integrity of a course will be damaged by the customization effort.

My recommendation is this: Don’t make a snap decision on either a trainer or on your customization approach.  Do you have to spend all this time and effort figuring this out?  Only if you want to get it right.

Source:  The Value and Perils of Customized Training, an ESR/Insight™ Brief.

Photo credit: © bugman – Fotolia.com

One of my most-used words these days is “scrutinize.”  Merriam-Webster says it means “to examine closely and minutely.”

At ESR, we find ourselves using the word fairly often:

• VPs have been asking us about how to determine which sales reps to keep and which to redeploy.  In this current economic situation some of what salesreps depended on to win in the past will simply no longer work.  It’s the old, “the past does not equal the future.” We recommend scrutinizing past performance as well as all the reps’ strengths and weaknesses against the new set of required skills and traits. And we strongly recommend psychometric testing. It’s very effective objective scrutiny.
  

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• We know from work with our clients that business acumen is more important now in B2B selling than ever before.  Salesreps need to scrutinize their customers, clients and prospects.  (More about this and some disturbing data when ESR reports on the results of our social media in B2B sales survey, which closed today.)  By the way, I was recently briefed by Chip Terry, Vice President and General Manager Enterprise Solutions at ZoomInfo.  He demoed their product.  Within two minutes I could see how ZoomInfo can provide the breadth and depth of information about not only companies, but equally as important, people within those companies, on whom salesreps would be calling.)
  

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• Messaging.  How relevant are the messages your salespeople are delivering to your customers and sales prospects?  Those need to be scrutinized and relevance to what and how your customers are buying must be determined.
  

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• New approaches and tools.  I’ve written a lot about the new social media as well as Sales 2.0 (again here).  These are very hot topics. (Just the number and flavor of comments to these three blog posts will attest to that.)  ESR’s recommendation is to… You guessed it:  thoroughly scrutinize any new direction or investment with respect to either or both of these promising technologies. The time may be right.  But then again, it may not be.
  

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• Lead Generation and Lead Nurturing.  Brian Carroll (podcast) and I are working on a project together.  Just yesterday we were discussing the challenges most companies are facing these days in those challenged areas.  What’s required for many companies is significant scrutiny. Bring in experts if you need to.  Get the right one—someone like Brian perhaps—and it will be money well-spent.
  

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• Sales training.  I’m very concerned about the significant drop in sales training during the past quarter.  Sales training may be precisely the right area to scale back in certain companies.  But certainly not in all, or even most.  Again, here’s where some significant scrutiny will enable you to determine where to spend your limited funds so that you have the biggest chance of making it through this economic situation.
  

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• Here are a few more areas that should be targeted for some scrutiny: Territory assignments, compensation, coaching mechanisms, measurement and analytics, sales process, sales support and readiness.  The list goes on.
  

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Photo credit: © Sandor Kacso – Fotolia.com

You may have noticed that I’ve been posting less frequently during the past two weeks.  ESR is in the midst of a number of projects and new initiatives.  In addition, I’ve been on an increasing number of phone calls with clients, prospects, vendors, sales training associations’ leadership, and business associates.

I wrote Here’s What’s Going On two weeks ago.  There has been lots of activity (and some productivity, as well!) since then.

Here are some points, observations, and opinions I’ve taken from my activities over the past few weeks:

1. I read all the news.  I understand the economic situation.  But deals are getting done.  Four of ESR’s clients I spoke with yesterday are cautiously optimistic about their Q1 numbers. They’re winning business.  A few others are struggling.  But the point is, there is still business going on.
   

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2. At the moment, ESR believes sales training will be down twenty or more percent in 2009.  If we don’t hit bottom and come out the other end of this situation soon, that number could go down much further.  That’s bad news for a lot of reasons.
   

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3. As a result of the slowdown in training, many of the sales training companies we cover have been hit hard.  They’ve significantly reduced their staffs and slowed or stopped development.  If you’re engaging with a sales training company, you really need to understand their current financial situation.  ESR isn’t interested in advertising which firms are having trouble.  But we do guide our clients in the right direction, helping them figure out how to mitigate any associated risks.
   

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4. We’ve convinced a number of our clients to redeploy salespeople who aren’t suited for the sales positions they hold.  By that I mean performing a comprehensive assessment of their past and current performance, their skills, traits and behaviors against what is required to comply with and execute their selling process.  Relative to that, I recently did a briefing call with DDI.  They’re a leader in the talent management and assessment area.  I’ve written about PIWorldwide as well.  HR Chally is another solid alternative.  Now, more than ever, every company, even the smallest, needs to have a talent management/assessment firm partner with a sales specialty.
   

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5. Under Brian Lambert’s leadership, ASTD is making significant progress in the sales training discipline.  Brian has a lot to offer the industry. I sit on the ASTD sales training committee along with a number of very experienced and professional consultants, trainers and practitioners.  (Al Case, ESR’s Principal Analyst, and I will be presenting at ASTD’s Conference in June.  The subject:  How to Measure Sales Performance Improvement.)
   

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6. We’ve had a record number of inquiries come in during the past month from people charged with driving sales training initiatives within their companies.  The common theme is that they have to “get it right this time. “  They can’t waste any more money on ineffective training and, with this economy, they’ve got to get their salespeople bringing in as much business as possible.  Even with overall sales training down, this is encouraging.  Several of those people are charged with moving their companies from positions of commodity to value providers.  A bit late for that, but better late than never.
   

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7. With the last point in mind, Irish sales trainer, coach and consultant Niall Devitt wrote a post this week that describes precisely how sales leaders go about buying sales training the wrong way.  The post, entitled Need Sales Training? Let’s Sit Down and Talk About It is well worth reading.   Niall sets an example for sales trainers as well.  I commend him on his understanding of how sales performance improvement should be approached and his integrity for not folding, even with money on the table during these tough times.
   

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8. Louise Leonard, program manager for The Dublin Institute of Technology and Enterprise Ireland’s International Selling Programme, sent me a list of sales-related concerns expressed by the sales executives and CEOs who are participating in the program.  I’ll be addressing many of them during upcoming two-week, five-seminar trip to Ireland.  Although Ireland is plowing through their own set of economy-related challenges, the International Selling Programme has  a record number of participants this year.  Better attendance at each of the sessions as well.  This program is a seriously good place for Irish companies to be investing their money.

Photo: © 2004 Dave Stein — MacGregor Powering Through a Summer Day

As ESR is completing our Sales Training Vendor Guide we are updating a number of our models.  Here is a presentation of our sales training approach model that we deliver to project teams tasked with finding, evaluating, and selecting sales training companies. The content is based upon work we’ve done with clients during the past two years.

As you can see, the process is considerably more comprehensive than you might think. Clients ask us, “Do we really have to do all this just to do some sales training?” Our answer is, “Only if you want it to work.” (Thanks, John Zobel.)

Here’s another taste of what’s in our Guide:

Resources: 

• ESR’s Sales Training Vendor Guide :: Third Edition
• Understanding, Defining and Meeting Your Sales Training Requirements

As ESR continues to assess our clients’ sales challenges, we maintain that having the wrong people in the sales jobs is, in many cases, the biggest inhibitor to the success of a training intervention.  My interview with Todd Harris of PI Worldwide highlighted one of the tools available for sales leaders to get an objective assessment of candidates as well as existing sales personnel.

I’m far from done with this subject.  I wanted to get another perspective, so here are some questions I posed to Kathleen Steffey, CEO of sales recruitment firm Naviga Business Services, based in Tampa.  Kathleen also writes the SalesJournal blog.

Dave Stein: As CEO of a national sales and marketing recruitment firm, share with me what changes you’ve seen in your business in the past three months.

Kathleen Steffey: In the last three months I’ve seen growth and expansion with my existing customer base and a decline in “new” customer contracts. Because of this trend, my business has made a shift to heavily focus on existing customer penetration and customer management. We’ve created new programs to capitalize on our existing customer base-viral marketing campaigns, referral programs, aggressive business development penetration (all inside our existing customer base). I am also focusing heavily on recruiting performance to make sure we are executing on every single piece of business we receive to maximize revenue. Customers are behaving in a very smart way and show a thorough decision making process when it comes to candidates. They are taking every aspect of the hiring process much more serious as every penny counts these days. Because my business is steadily growing, we are currently looking for additional recruiters. Our recruiter candidate pipeline is the best I’ve seen in years, in terms of quality. I am taking advantage of the down market to select only the best and brightest to join my team in the next month.

DS: I’m curious about high-performing sales reps. Do you see them looking for new opportunities or are they sticking with the companies for which they are currently working?

KS: The volume of candidate flow has increased dramatically.  Many, many “A” player sales reps have been laid off and/or are looking for a new opportunities due to the instability of their current employer. I personally know many sales executives who have contacted me to express that they are looking for a new opportunity.  They are coming out of the woodwork right now.

DS: What about sales managers? Any new trends there? Are your clients hiring?

KS: I have seen a trend of customers that have a strong focus on evaluating overall team sales performance and linking it back to poor sales leadership. A handful of my customers are deciding to really clean shop and terminate low performing sales reps and terminate non-influential sales leaders. We have many confidential searches going on that support this scenario.

DS: What advice might you give to a sales rep or manager who is currently employed?  Stick where they are or look around for a better opportunity?

KS: If someone is employed with an organization that is reacting well to this current economy-shifting, changing, creating, enhancing, looking at different verticals to penetrate, etc, then you have a proactive organization that is adjusting to the current state and shows promise. I say stick it out and keep at it… Penetrate your prospects harder than ever and make sure you’re creating value, providing solid industry insight and serving them well.. better than you ever have.

I can’t comment on whether or not someone should stay with their organization.. it completely depends on the state of the business, industry, product, etc. I do know that two of the hottest industries that are doing well right now are healthcare and energy, in the event people need focus on where to look.

DS: I know your firm does about 20% retained and 80% contingency work. What advice can you give a hiring authority as to which way to go?

KS: While both options offer our customers the same level of attention and quality, I would have to suggest that going retained always wins. A retained relationship brings focus, commitment and efficiency to the customer/vendor partnership and displays strong value in filling the position with Naviga. At the very least, a retained relationship removes other variables that the hiring manager would normally have to deal with if working contingency-job advertisements, other recruiters, internal responses to postings, etc. A retained relationship allows Naviga to streamline the recruiting process and save valuable time for our customers.

DS: How is your firm helping companies hire the right candidates?  As you know, ESR’s research identifies this as a big, big problem.

KS: First and foremost we get to know our customers. I view this as a critical piece in quality recruiting and making an appropriate match. We understand the make-up of the organization—revenues, employees, top leadership style, product/service focus, market differentiation, strengths/weaknesses, etc. Next we get to the critical part of the engagement and this is where we reveal the sales culture/environment. We understand the sales team, territories, product price, sales cycle, ramp up, top performer profiles, sales leadership and how the team is led, CRM/reporting requirements, candidate profile, etc.  We’ve found that there is a significant correlation with how the team is led and the performance of the overall team. We take this discovery serious to determine if our candidates will be in an environment where they can be successful.

I am a strong advocate of this statement, “The best predictor of future performance is past performance”.. I train and coach my team to measure the quality of the candidates by their past performance and to relate the sales environment associated with those successes to the current position we are looking to fill. I am also a strong advocate of looking at W2’s, understanding the past compensation programs, looking at industry, product/services, average sales cycle and deal price and evaluate whether or not there is a sales environment/culture match.

Because Naviga specializes in sales recruitment, our evaluation process is very specialized and “sales centric.” We have a standardized evaluation process that every recruiter uses and it’s based on the position we are recruiting; for an example-it can vary based on hunter, farmer, or leadership positions. We use a standard list of eight (8) key sales dimensions when we interview candidates. We ask questions around selling skills, sales knowledge, intellectual ability, personal, interpersonal, motivation, tenure and compensation. Our internal evaluation process is a hybrid of Greg Alexander’s Top Grading for Sales approach, which is adjusted for our business model/customer needs.

Photo credit:  © Lisa F. Young – Fotolia.com

A lot more salesreps are working from home now than even a few years ago.  But working from home isn’t for every salesrep or every company.  Now’s the time to look at this issue.  It could mean the difference between your home-office reps making their numbers or not.

A post on (Jigsaw’s CEO) Garth Moulton’s blog about the profiles of inside sales reps brought to mind some of the discussions we’ve had with VPs of sales about the challenges related to telecommuting for their salesreps.

I recently discussed an underperforming  home-based salesrep with his VP of sales.  Intent on  diagnosing the problem, I asked, “Do you have evidence that he’s working 50 to 60 hours a week…  for you?“  The VP said he didn’t know whether the rep was working the hours, or full time for his company.  He should have known the answers to both parts of that question and the answers should have been two yesses.

When hiring, there is no question in my mind that you don’t want to be the one who gives a salesrep her first opportunity to work from a home office.  Way too risky.  I’ve seen dozens of failures due to this simple mistake.  You have to be certain that the rep has been successfully selling from a home office environment.  There are traits and skills required to accomplish this.  Know what those are and make sure you compare the candidate against those requirements.

If an office-based rep you currently have on board wants to switch to telecommute for first time, now may not be the best time.  Neither you nor they can afford a slip in productivity.  Just because someone wants to work from a home office doesn’t mean they should.

We’ve been working with a few clients that have very good situations with salesreps who work from home.  Most notable are two women who had a terrific year in 2008 with one of our clients, closing multiple $250k application software opportunities without ever leaving their home offices.  They are relentless qualifiers, have very effective discovery processes, are marvelous at creating demand and leading champions within their customers’ organizations through a collaborative buying/selling process.  These home-based reps are motivated, focused, and have all the skills and attributes required for successful selling from a home office.

Here are some recommendations:

• Don’t hire a rep for a home-0ffice situation who can’t prove they’ve been successful at it in the past.
• Some salesreps need the support and camaraderie associated with an office environment. Others aren’t capable of working from home due to lack of discipline or motivation.  Still others don’t have the knowledge, experience or skills to get the job done.  Make sure you know all the strengths and weaknesses of your own reps and anyone you are looking at hiring.
• Certain selling  jobs require a fair amount of time in the office.  If that’s the case, no one should be based at home. A day a week, fine, but no more than that.
• Don’t let a good rep strong-arm you into allowing them to transition to a home-based office unless you’re certain they’ll get the selling job done.
• Make sure you’ve got the right sales performance measurement system in place.  You need to be able to spot trends in individual performance before they impact your forecast.
• If you’re going to have reps working from home, provide them with the equipment they need, including hardware (for example, a backup hard drive), the appropriate sales enablement software (a strong knowledge management system, for example) and a high-quality headset.

Finally, the risks associated with home-based sales reps are mitigated when you have a pragmatic sales methodology that’s in place and used across your entire sales team.  If you don’t have one, that’s what you need to do, starting today.

Photo credit: © Wollwerth Imagery – Fotolia.com

ESR has a unique perspective on sales performance improvement. We don’t deliver sales training or sales consulting. We’re sales training industry observers, analysts, researchers and advisors to our clients on what works in sales effectiveness and training.

Here’s what’s been going on at ESR:

• A large client in the financial services sector is working very hard to keep their sales opportunities from coming down to price.  That tendency is considerably worse right now than it’s been in previous years.  They have superior service, a stellar reputation, a world-class team, enviable financial viability, and other significant customer-focused advantages. But in many situations, it’s a challenge to get the customer to acknowledge the direct link from all those capabilities to measurable business value for them.  The client is becoming considerably better a competing, employing advanced selling skills, strategies and tactics for overcoming price disadvantage, when it exists.  Even though demand is up, commoditization is the biggest challenge.  All in all, a challenging year.  I believe they’ll get through this pretty well, with everything considered.
• A smaller client is facing other challenges.  They are doing well at demand creation.  A strong marketing function is serving the sales team well.  However, they’re facing the all-too-common 80/20 situation.  The 20% of the reps that are bringing in the deals are top quality.  The company has to make a move to redeploy the reps who can’t be trained and coached into a higher level of sales productivity.  Also, the company is relatively process deficient.  They possess a single, high-level Powerpoint slide that represents their selling process, but it is in no way sufficient to drive consistent performance across an entire sales team.  The good news is that a strong management team is determined to overcome the challenges they have.  We’re working with the CEO who will be driving the transition to a more effective sales capability.  They aren’t looking for shortcuts.
• One Fortune 500 company is coaching us through creation of a collaborative proposal for ESR to perform an assessment of their global sales approach and capabilities.  That will result in an RFP and a vendor evaluation and selection process.  They need to transition from the commodity approach they employ now to a more collaborative and consultative relationships with customers.  They are seeking a long-term sales training/consulting partner.  We are delighted that they are taking a strategic approach to sales effectiveness. They aren’t looking for shortcuts either.
• Another Fortune 25 is in an enviable position with regard to the stimulus package and Obama’s strong energy initiatives.  They want to make the most out of this situation.  We’re providing guidance to them on the right approach for re-engineering their sales processes as well as in selecting a training partner.  They’ll only have one chance to get this right, and they know it.  No shortcuts here either.
• ESR is working with a leading sales training company, surveying the effectiveness of social media in B2B selling.  I’ll provide a link to the short survey soon.
• ESR has been investigating and evaluating the use of virtual worlds—mainly Second Life—for training and strategic account management among some very large corporations.  Anders Gronstedt is the expert in this area when applied to sales effectiveness and training.  We’ll be reporting on Second Life in March.
• Having suffered through a number of delays, ESR’s Sales Training Vendor Guide, Third Edition will be published.  Right now, I’m the bottleneck.
• Within a week ESR will be publishing a research update on Sales 2.0.  I’ve been writing about this subject a lot on this blog.  I’m very concerned about all the hype around Sales 2.0 and that it is distracting many companies from doing the right things to improve sales effectiveness.  Al Case, our Principal Analyst, performed the research and is authoring the reports.  I’m certain they’ll be enlightening because we’re unbiased, objective and don’t have any Sales 2.0 products or services to sell you.
• We’re working with a few trainers looking to sell or license their IP.  At the same time we are in discussions with several entrepreneurs looking to invest, in one form or another, in sales training IP.  Lots of phone calls and a bit of match making.
• We’ve got a number of events coming up:
  • FranklinCovey Sales Performance Group — Wed, March 11, 1:00 pm ET — Strategies For Getting Your Customers Through the Financial Crisis A webinar.
  • The TAS Group — April 8th — Time and subject to be announced for this webinar.
  • Callidus Software — June 26 — Sales 2.0: How to Realize the Full Potential Value – A webinar.
  • Boston Conferencing — July 30 — Hiring Salesreps and Managers That Get The Job Done A paid webinar.
  • We’re presenting at ASTD’s ICE conference May 31 to June 3: How to Measure Sales Performance Improvement
  • I’ll be keynoting at SMT’s annual conference October 14-16
  • Assorted presentations at different internal company events…
• Lots more going on, including a new ESR website, new value for our subscribers, and a few new, exciting initiatives.

We at ESR are fortunate, at least for the moment.  We see opportunity.  Our clients need our guidance.  So long was we can directly contribute to them getting through these tough economic times, they’ll be OK and therefore we will as well.

Photo credit: © Stephen Coburn – Fotolia.com

As ESR continues to work with our clients, observe salespeople and research sales effectiveness, we’re frustrated and concerned with the increasing hype around Sales 2.0.

Is Sales 2.0 real?  Yes.  Are Sales 2.0 applications actually helping salespeople to win business? Yes.  There is no question about that.  But we believe in numbers significantly less than some would have you believe.  I expect the Sales 2.0 vendors will be all over me about this.  Yes, I know they can provide compelling case studies, references and testimonials.  The issue is much broader and quite serious.

Before I go any further, I want to acknowledge that there are highly effective sales enablement (Sales 2.0) apps on the market.  What immediately comes to mind are those of some of the leading sales training companies: The TAS Group with their Dealmaker and TAS:Pedia (we saw an exciting demo of new releases last week) and the effective technology implementations of a number of other sales methodologies by White Springs.

ESR knows that the sales methodology and the processes upon which it is built should be the backbone of a company’s sales approach.  Significant research bears this out.  Get that methodology thing right, provide all the support, training and coaching and get all your salespeople following it (with the requisite flexibility for differing situations, of course), and you are taking one of the most important strategic actions that determines sales success.  Automate it and you’re doing even better.  That’s what some of the leading training companies are accomplishing.  They’re helping companies improve sales performance by getting them to employ a process.  Then they’re automating the process to make salespeople more effective and efficient.  It works considerably more often than not, and in the world of B2B selling, that’s an accomplishment.

Here’s my concern: Sales 2.0 vendors are pushing hard, claiming that their software applications will solve specific selling problems.  Many of the vendors are right, but—here’s the thing—if the sales leaders who are considering investing in those apps don’t have their team lined up and fully compliant with the consistent execution of a sales process, with training, coaching and metrics in place, they will more likely compound the problem than fix it.  That’s what happened with CRM years ago.  Many of us saw it promoted as a paradigm-changing fix for most sales ills.  CRM’s big problem, was (is?) that there was nothing in it for the salesperson, and that’s why compliance was (and still is, in many cases) so low.  For many companies, CRM served to make the situation worse, not better.  It kept sales management from focusing on the real issues.  It was a decoy!

Will sales problems get compounded with the purchase of a few cool Sales 2.0 tools?  It’s like my problem with sales tips.  Allowing sales people to spend time seeking out and using random tips from unapproved (and sometimes incompetent) sources takes everyone’s attention off the real issue—no process!—and the lack of discipline to build one and follow one.  Sales 2.0 has become the new silver bullet—this year’s universal elixir to solve a company’s selling problems.  In those cases, Sales 2.0 may provide some value, granted, but with a steep price: it becomes a distraction from what really has to be done.  By the way, I spent better part of a week struggling to make the same decoy argument about the current state of social media with respect to B2B sales…

Here’s an example of how a solid Sales 2.0 application can turn out to be a broken promise: There are some terrific sales analytics packages out there.  But what good are analytics if a company doesn’t have a documented and fully-complied with sales process?  What will happen when leading indicators show a bunch of deals are slowing down?  What will managers coach reps on?  How they themselves won business years ago?  Those managers should be coaching the rep on how the rep can better comply with the pre-established sales process—on what specific behaviors the rep must improve so they can effectively execute the process and move the deal along.  We have worked with companies that have installed analytics tools and the results were precisely as I described.  Lots of data, but no standard operating procedure for fixing the situation.

Another example would be Sales 2.0 lead generation tools.  There are some really good, innovative ones out there.  Sexy as hell.  So what happens when a sales rep uses one of these and winds up with some really good prospects and the rep can’t advance the sale from that point to closure because they don’t have the skills, proven path, tools and support to get that done?  I hope you get my point.

So here is my recommendation.  If you get all charged up about a Sales 2.0 tool that you think will help your sales team sell more stuff, faster and for bigger dollars, map the application onto the backbone of your overall sales process.  If you don’t have a sales process, stop right there.  That’s what you need to do first.  It’s not sexy, it’s not fun, it takes time, thought, focus and you’ll find every excuse not to do it.  But the research says it’s what you have to do.

Bottom line: If you want a real boost in sales effectiveness, get your selling methodology and process built, train your people on its use and support them in their effort.  Automate it all, if you like.

Then, and only then, when that’s ticking nicely along, and you can measure progress, start layering in the Sales 2.0 applications that will have the biggest bang for the buck.  Then you’ll really get some value out of Sales 2.0.

Let me hear from you.  Do you think a solid, complied-with sales process is the backbone upon which Sales 2.0 applications must be layered?  Or not?

Photo credit: © Valeriy Aksak – Fotolia.com

I’ve been a proponent of psychometric/predictive testing for salespeople for many years.  I was a non-believer until Nancy Martini, now CEO at PI Worldwide, put me through their Predictive Index and SSAT (see below) in 2001.  After I took the two tests online, Nancy emailed me the manager’s version of my results and I nearly fell off my chair—the appraisal was that accurate.

My friend,  sales trainer Steve Waterhouse, is a PI consultant as well.  Those tests are terrific tools for a sales trainer to have for diagnosis.

Let me state this clearly:  One of the root causes of the many B2B sales challenges companies have today is that they have too many unqualified people in sales jobs.  Among ESR’s clients and the companies we spoke with as many as 25% to 33% (depending on the industry) of sales people aren’t suited for the jobs they hold.  That means, based upon skill and trait gaps between what is required for success and what those reps possess, there isn’t enough time or money for them to ever come up to speed.  The solution is simple, but not easy.  Don’t hire people that can’t get the job done.

We know for a fact that profiling and a structured interview process are critical for hiring success.  We also know that psychometric and skills testing saves interview cycle time and significantly reduces risk.

I posed some questions to Todd Harris, Ph.D., Director of Research at PI Worldwide.

Dave Stein: Why is predictive testing so important for a company’s sales effectiveness?

Todd Harris: Twenty-five years of research clearly indicates that personality factors significantly impact sales success.  For example, in a recent Predictive Index® (PI) study of 32 outside sales representatives tasked with selling manufacturing equipment to medium-sized businesses, those who were more independent, confident, assertive and embracing of change achieved over five times more sales volume during a 27-month period than those who were not.

DS: How accurate are your tests?

TH: Very accurate. In over 400 separate studies, PI has been statistically shown to measure factors that impact actual work performance, including sales performance across a wide range of sales positions. Further, to be considered scientifically sound, an assessment has to demonstrate both reliability and validity. Reliability refers to the consistency of a measurement. Validity refers to the accuracy of a measurement Research by psychologists and experience with clients show PI to be reliable and valid.

DS: Can a salesperson “beat” the test?

TH: It is nearly impossible for someone to substantially distort their PI profile. There are a number of reasons for this. First, the PI is a “free-choice” instrument with no right or wrong answers, no invasive or overly personal items, and it is not obvious what it measures or how it does so. Second, research supports that fewer than 5% of job applicants attempt to significantly “cheat”, “game” or otherwise distort their responses to employment tests. Thus, this potential problem is much less widespread than some people assume.

DS: Where in the hiring process do you recommend the test be applied – the beginning, the middle, or the end?

TH: In general, most of the sales organizations we work with administer the PI relatively early in the process, combining a candidate’s PI results with other data points (e.g. resume, interview, references, experience level, etc.) to make a fully informed decision. Additionally, the PI can and should be used post-hire as a component of sales coaching and development efforts to motivate and maximize sales performance.

DS: What areas of a sales person’s capabilities do the tests cover?

TH: Fundamentally, the PI taps into what motivates and drives their behaviors and actions on a day-to-day basis. The PI measures many key constructs such as their ability to self-start, take action in the face of adversity or obstacles, connect with and influence others, drive their pace of activity, and plan and follow through.

DS: Is there more than one test?

TH: PI Worldwide® offers a comprehensive suite of sales-related products and solutions. The Predictive Index assesses a sales representative’s motivating drives and behaviors, our Selling Skills Assessment Tool^TM (SSAT) is a skills-based diagnostic instrument that gauges how adept a sales representative, sales team and the entire organization are at executing key elements of the sales process and Customer-Focused Selling^TM (CFS) utilizes data from the PI and SSAT to provide a targeted and comprehensive sales training experience.

DS: Do you provide testing for sales managers as well?

TH: Both the PI and the SSAT can be used with sales managers and sales executives. Our clients often find the most benefit when these tools are consistently deployed and scaled throughout the entire organization, as they provide a common and objective framework and language for driving sales performance. In addition, we provide a sales management course Coaching to Excellence which combines skills, process, and data to help sales leaders drive performance.

DS: What kind of financial return would a sales leader expect to see on a full-fledged investment in your testing product(s)?

TH: We commonly observe year-over-year sales increases in the 20% to 25% range. For example, over a two-year period, a biosciences company grew sales from $38.3 Million to $55.3 Million, an increase of 44% over two years. Many clients see even larger gains.

If you can think of reasons not to do predictive, psychometric and sales skills testing during the recruitment and selection process, let me know.

Photo credit: © Jeffrey Collingwood – Fotolia.com

Although I met Charlie Green a number of years ago when we were both presenting at a sales conference, I’ve only recently gotten to appreciate his perspective, his integrity and his intelligence.

Rather than me tell you about him, I asked him some questions instead.  Read, learn and enjoy.

Dave Stein: You’ve created a fabulous brand around “trusted advisor.” Since I’m a believer in personal branding, would you explain a few of the most important steps you took to build your brand?

Charlie Green: Well, I didn’t consciously set out to create a brand; I’m not recommending anyone do that, just telling you how it happened. But in retrospect, I think a couple of things were helpful.

One was certainly the name itself. Trusted Advisor was a term that has had some currency for a long time. It was probably un-trademarkable at the time, and certainly is now. It had been used in advertisements, and everyone had an intuitive sense of it as relevant, but vague. In retrospect, that was a helluva good decision.

In my case, I also chose a high-content, high transparency route. Following some great advice and example from David Maister, I wrote an awful lot, made sure it was very good, and put it all out there. My economic model is based on keynotes and seminars, not on selling videos or online product. That means I have no reason not to pretty much put everything out there-it enhances my brand, which is good for visibility (and pricing).

Finally, I give a lot of credit to my IT people, StressLimitDesign. They are a few young people up in Canada who combine great visual design sense with internet and technical savvy, are deeply into emerging trends (blogging, tweeting, et al) and know how to combine them to help businesses like me. Plus they work very hard. My site design-graphics, content and all-has been consciously designed to reinforce a particular brand-in my case thoughtful, provocative, insightful, broad-based, etc.

DS: What I like about your approach is that it isn’t a bunch of tips and tricks. It’s more about who you need to become than what you need to do. Do I have that about right?

CG: Absolutely. I deeply believe that when it comes to something as complex as trust, “tips and tricks” cannot cut it. Would you trust someone whose approach to trust was based on “tips and tricks?” No. Being trustworthy at its root is relational-it’s got to involve some sense of behaving appropriately with another, whether it’s caring about them, or being concerned, or deferred gratification, or customer focus. We trust people because we believe they’re not going to treat us as objects for their gratification, means to their ends. And that is a matter of character. Not tips and tricks.

And it goes beyond that. The dominant shift in management thinking in the last four decades has been all about “tips and tricks,” that is, behavioral approaches. Think about how obsessed we have become with measurement, management processes, outsourcing, rewards and incentives. In each of these areas, we have become behaviorally obsessed-the root of “tips and tricks.” What we have left behind is all the parts of business that have to do with relationships, beliefs and attitudes, internal mindsets. And those are what are critical to trust. We don’t trust behaviors, we trust the motives behind those behaviors. If someone’s motives are suspect, their behaviors are completely useless-we suspect them all. Tips and tricks all become the bases for suspicion and lack of trust.

Whew-you got me wound up on that one!

DS: Can you give us a (brief) example of how you have used your trusted advisor status to outposition or outsell a competitor of yours?

CG: Several. But it’s a little paradoxical; the way you “outsell” someone is by not thinking of it as “outselling” a competitor, but by doing a better job of serving a customer. The competitive outcome (and the profit outcome, for that matter) is a byproduct, not a goal.

Example 1. A client asked me in to talk about a program. He told me up front who the competitors were. I said, “those are all good options. Let’s talk about what it is that you need, and that will help you determine who to go with.” We then talked for several hours, brainstorming, about what kind of program they should design. We never touched on the topic of competitors again in that conversation, only on his program.

Basically, I took the attitude that this was the first day of the project, and we appropriately started at the high level brainstorming kind of interaction. He called me the next day to say he had chosen me. I didn’t ask why, but he volunteered: “You were the only one who was clearly willing to work collaboratively with us, rather than go back to the black box and propose something.” He didn’t say more about the others, and I didn’t ask.

Example 2. A first-meeting client asked me, “Why should we go with you?” I said, “I have no idea why, or even whether you should go with me at all. We just met! It would be arrogant of me to tell you what you should do, much less why. Let’s talk, and then we can figure it out together, and if I’m not the right person for the job, I’ll be the first to tell you, because there’s nothing worse then selling a job you can’t deliver. So let’s figure out together who it is you need to be working with.” He laughed, and we got along great from then on.

Example 3. One of the things I suggest is that you write your next proposal sitting next to the prospective client, rather than back at the office. When I started to recommend that, of course I had to live by my own advice. A keynote speech client approached me after the speech and said, “We’d like to hire you for some seminar work-so I guess you’ll be wanting to come over and write the proposal with us. What will we need to bring to the meeting?”

Not much, I said, “some information about how you’ve approached seminars in the past would be useful. But mainly, we’ll talk through what you want to accomplish and think about how to do it.” The client thought for a minute and said, “Oh to heck with it, we’ll just send you a contract to sign, we don’t need to go through any formalities.” In other words, the mere offer of being so transparent was sufficient to trigger the buying decision.

I think all of those cases come from two simple ideas.

One is that the main job, the only job really, is to do good things for your client. Period. That, and every once in a while look up and say am I deploying my resources intelligently. No point in drilling an obviously dry hole. But to start worrying about whether this meeting is a good one or not, how’s my sales call efficiency, how will I close the deal, how much margin can I get-no. Don’t go there. Just stay focused on doing the right thing for the client. If you do that, the rest will become obvious. You should be selected, or you should not. You can do the job, or you cannot. They can pay you a fair price, or they cannot. If all that becomes clear, then they will buy, or they will not. Either way, you’ve advanced their business. And-you get a lot of respect, references and future business by simply staying focused on them, not on your own internal navel-gazing metrics and processes.

Second is the idea of selling by doing, not selling by telling. Beyond the bare minimum of who you are (30 seconds max, and your website probably already did the trick), people DO NOT want to hear about your qualifications. They also don’t want to hear about how wonderful you were to a bunch of strangers-it’s like telling someone on a blind date about how great all your past dates thought you were. Instead, just focus on this client. Do the work in real time. Start delivering at the first sales meeting. Assume you’ve got the job, and start working it. That actually sells, because everyone’s favorite subject is themselves. So, focus on them. And show them your wares. The best selling is samples selling; so, give some samples. Go into the sales call with a blank yellow pad and a few questions, and start listening, and interacting. Start delivering in the sales call. That IS the sales call.

DS: How do you see your trusted advisor orientation having an impact on a sales professional’s ability to weather this financial crisis?

CG: You are deeply immersed in this subject-more so than many other experts are in theirs. Anyone reading your blog can see that. What thought process to you employ to keep you focused and able to look deeper and deeper into this subject?

One thing I’ve noticed is the default tendency of everyone to go short-term, tactical, inward, self-focused, and to see this recession as just that- a recession. The trick is to notice this is not a recession-this is just the downside of a two-part cycle. All relationships are up and down, good times and bad times, sickness and health. Is your perspective the relationship cycle? Or just what you can get out the other at each point in time?

Who do you trust? The people who stick by you in the downside. This is a great opportunity to forge really strong relationships, when everyone else is scrambling for their spot in the lifeboat. If you can be the one who dances with the one who brung you, who demonstrates true service when the client really needs it, guess what? You reap the benefits later. It’s a simple as deferred gratification, but almost all our management techniques du jour-again I’m back to measurements and reward systems and “tips and tricks”–very few of those reach out beyond a few months. None of them focus on multi-year perspectives. But that’s what it takes.

I saw one firm that serves professional services client whose recommendation for the recession included “if you’re going to lay people off, do it in FY2008, so you get the tax deduction.” See what I mean about short term and selfish? By contrast, what if you’re a law firm in Cleveland? This is the time you go to the Cleveland Symphony and you say, “This is tough on us; but it’s got to be even tougher on you. Here’s $10K, and it’s unrestricted.”

Pick a few, select clients-you cannot do this for everyone, but isn’t that the point of relationships?—and say to them “we’re giving you a break on receivables cycle,” or “we’d like to give you some free staff days to work on that strategic project we discussed with you,” or “we don’t want to lay off people, but we’re under-employed-would you like us to second someone to you for 3 months,” or “we know you need this done but can’t afford it just now, we’ll split the cost with you.”

Remember, no one has repealed the law of gravity. What went up goes down, but it wil rise again. And people have long memories. They trust those who did well by them. Make sure that’s you.

Charlie Green has taught in executive education programs for several business schools. He was with the MAC Group and its successor, Gemini Consulting, for 20 years, where his roles included strategy consulting (in Europe and the United States), Vice President of Planning, and other leadership positions. He is the founder of Trusted Advisor Associates.

Photo credit: © Swifter – Fotolia.com