The Economy Is Down, So It’s Webinar Time!

I’ve delivered lots of webinars over the years, working with all the well-know providers and others as well.  With only two exceptions where the audio was lost for all the participants, I’ve had very good experiences.  That’s not by accident.  My content is always relevant to the audience, I rehearse, I’m facile with the technology, [...]

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 [...]

Let’s Get Real Or Let’s Not Play

Last July I was honored to be sent a final draft of Mahan Khalsa and Randy Illig’s revised and expanded edition of Let’s Get Real or Let’s Not Play.
Mahan and Randy are key members of FranklinCovey’s sales performance practice.  (Here is a podcast interview I did with Mahan.)
What is immediately significant about this book is [...]

ESR’s 2008 Sales Training Arena

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 [...]

Making the Number: How to Use Sales Benchmarking to Drive Performance

I’ve been writing about measuring the impact of sales training for a while.  ESR published a report on the subject.  We know from our research that there is little to no measurement taking place—not by most sales trainers and not by their clients and customers.  This is one of the factors that is preventing the degree [...]

Changes at FranklinCovey Sales Performance Group

Note: This post replaces the one published earlier.
During the past several months there have been significant changes at FranklinCovey.  In May the company sold off its Consumer Solutions Business Unit.  The company is now focused on global consulting and training in the areas of strategy execution, customer loyalty, leadership and individual effectiveness.
The Sales Performance Group (SPG) has [...]

Coaching Sales People

Coaching is the component of a sales effectiveness initiative that is most often sacrificed when costs must be contained.  (More accurately, coaching workshops and post-program reinforcement for first-line sales managers are what gets cut.)  Considering that coaching is the most important single mechanism for reinforcing and sustaining the impact of learning, this is a big problem. 
During a podcast interview I recorded Tuesday [...]