Groundhog Day

I’m in Ireland this week and next working with Sales Executives and CEOs in a series of one- and two-day workshops as part of the International Selling Program offered by Enterprise Ireland (Ireland’s commerce department) and DIT (The Dublin Institute of Technology, where I am an adjunct professor of sales and sales management).   My [...]

The Value and Perils of Customized Sales Training

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, [...]

ESR’s Sales Training Vendor Guide Published Today

ESR’s Sales Training Vendor Guide: Third Edition was published this morning.
The Guide analyzes, compares, and contrasts 23 leading sales training providers across many areas including:

Solutions Range
Range of Target Companies
Range of Target Audiences
Range of Training Programs
Adaptability
Range of Instructional Aids & Tools
Quality of Instructional Design
Measurement Programs
Post-training Reinforcement
Supporting Technology
Yield Growth
Return-On-Training (ROT)
Utilization among sales teams
Ease of Learning/Adoption

The Guide weighs [...]

The New Social Media (Wars)

I’ve been involved in a number of posts on The Customer Collective where there have been some personal attacks by a few social media zealots against some of us that have a more balanced view of the capabilities and tools required for effective B2B selling going forward in this new(est) economy.   Jonathan Farrington1, Dave Brock, [...]

Sales Playbooks

A few weeks ago the folks at Kadient briefed me on their approach and their sales performance improvement tools.  As you would expect, I posed the chicken-and-egg question with respect to what order a company should implement Kadient’s tools versus installing and implementing a sales methodology.  I liked their answers.
I picked up a tweet from [...]

Customized Sales Training

From ESR’s Sales Training Vendor Guide — Third Edition:
“Most buyers of sales training want a customized sales training experience. The question is, what categories of modifications are positive for their organizations and which limit the impact from the learning experience?
Universally, sales training companies claim that they will customize course materials.  But the buyer needs [...]

What About Your Salesreps Who Work From Home?

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 [...]

Here’s What’s Going On

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 [...]

What Do Diets And Sales Approaches Have In Common?

Last month the National Center for Health Statistics revealed that nearly 70 percent of Americans are overweight. Thirty-four percent of those people are not merely overweight—they are obese.
Do you think the silver bullet for all these people is the 231st diet? Probably not. What do you think the solution is? Take [...]

Channel Management: Do You Really Mean Business?

ESR estimates that 70% of all goods and services are sold via third-party sales channels, not direct sales.   Our ongoing examination of sales training programs shows a significant disparity, with most training and content focused on field sales personnel, not channel managers.
We understand that channel managers need significant sales skills, a deep operational and financial [...]