I’m delighted to be both presenting and participating in a panel discussion at the Sales 2.0 Conference in Boston on May 21^st.

Using recent research from ESR’s Sales Training Vendor Guide, I’ll talk specifically about technology-enabled learning—how technology is changing learning and why today, effective sales learning requires technology.

I’ve not been shy in voicing my concerns about the some of the hype and lofty expectations around Sales 2.0 and the distraction that it causes for some of our client companies struggling through the kinds of sales challenges that Sales 2.0 approaches and tools can’t immediately overcome.

At the same time substantive progress is being made on the technology front.  ESR has given credit to those companies who are making real contributions to sales effectiveness through technology-enabled learning and technology-enabled selling—companies like Kadient, Richardson, The TAS Group, SPI, Holden, White Springs, Primary Intelligence, The Brooks Group, Miller Heiman, LinkedIn, ZoomInfo, Jigsaw, Lucidera, and many more.

As a researcher and analyst, I’ll be in learning mode at the conference as well.  I’m looking forward to understanding more about the approaches and solutions of the companies presenting and sponsoring this event, and learning from those sales leaders who will be attending it.  Please introduce yourselves to me.

Hope to see you there.  If you can’t attend, I’ll keep you informed through Twitter.

Photo credit:  (c) 2008 Dave Stein — Boston from 7000 feet
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Donate $25 or more to the human rights charity Witness.org, email your receipt to me,
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There have been some interesting conversations taking place on The Customer Collective on the subject of the adoption of social media and the changes required in approach and skills for B2B salespeople.  If you’re interested in a little entertainment—snarking, social media-style—I would suggest looking at these two posts and more important the comment thread that follows: David Brock’s Why Do Sales People Have Such a Bad Reputation? and Axel Schultze’s Death of a sales man (sic).

Axel, a proponent of social media for B2B sales made a strong case for massive adoption, now.

What follows is my comment to Axel’s post in Death of a sales man.  There are a number of other comments to read, most of which make some good points.

I agree with many of your points.  I see things a bit differently … with respect to where some components of some sales peoples’ jobs are headed in the short term.  Technology, and more specifically, social media are playing a larger and larger role.  No argument from me there.  I know that as a researcher, as a business person, as a salesperson, and as a buyer!  I’m engaged.

Here, however, are some points for consideration:

• Some major market segments are today very, very far away from regular and widespread use of social media between buyers and sellers.  Industries such as industrial equipment, insurance, and some sub-sectors of health care have a long way to go.  There are other segments as well.  Government sales is in that category.  Those lagging industries and local, state and federal agencies, for the time being, are employing more traditional ways of learning about products and services—Web 1.0—looking at alternative vendors’ websites and discussions with salespeople and the experts they bring to the party.  Attempt to come at them through social media and you’ll likely find no one at the other end of the tweet.
• Certain modes of selling will lag significantly in the adoption of social media as a selling tool and capability.  As one example, the success of the strategic account manager (SAM) presently depends on many of the more traditional sales skills and capabilities to drive the tens to hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue they each bring to their companies each year.  Will that change?  Sure.  But not this week, this month, or maybe even this year.  If the seller tried to alter that relationship it would be very risky. [The premier source of intelligence on that discipline is SAMA: the Strategic Account Management Association.]

We can’t throw out all the old concepts, approaches and skills just yet.  Many billions of dollars of business will get done this year by sellers employing the skills taught by Miller Heiman, Wilson, Huthwaite, Holden, SPI, The Complex Sale, and the other larger as well as single-person firms. My firm studies those companies and has audited the performance improvement results that some of their clients have achieved.

I know there are many reading this that think that stuff is old and irrelevant.  I agree.  It is, but only in a minority of B2B selling situations.  Mainstream corporate and government sales success is still driven by overall compliance with a buyer-centric sales methodology.  I know some don’t want to hear that.  But the fact is this: research proves that compliance with many traditional sales best-practices is getting the job done for many companies.

So, if my points about social media being relevant to a relatively small piece of the B2B market are correct, we are potentially doing a real disservice to many sales people and managers by distracting them with representations that the whole world of selling is changing, now.

I would estimate that 80 to 90% of direct salespeople in B2B sales need to get better at the more traditional approaches to selling–for the time being. This is important:  There is significant room for improvement in sales performance through sales leaders adopting the best-practices of top-performing selling companies in areas other than social media.

Here’s the bottom line for me, Axel:  If a salesperson’s buyers have really embraced social media as a way to establish and build relationship with those who would provide them with valuable products and services, great.  Those companies do exist.  But in general, and regretfully for some I’m sure, we’re just not there yet.

Special favor: I’m really interested in your feedback on this subject.  If you’re a sales leader, would you please take this brief Kadient survey?  It will help us figure out what is really going on with respect to the use of social media in B2B sales.

Note: I suggest the reader peruse the comments to this post.  Wow!

Followers of this blog are familiar with the high value I place on planning, competitive selling strategies, and political leverage for winning complex sales situations as well as for effectively managing strategic accounts.  I was first introduced to Holden many years ago by Steve Slaughter, a salesrep who worked for me who had been through Holden’s PowerBase Selling.  I subsequently brought Jim Holden and his team into that company and others as well.  Although Holden wasn’t right for every company at that time, they certainly were for us.  Stellar implementations of the Holden methodology at several companies with whom I was engaged enabled us to grab and sustain leadership positions.

Like most sales training companies, Holden International has been through some significant challenges during the past decade. Recently, I spent some time with the executive management team as part of our research for ESR’s upcoming 2009 Sales Training Vendor Guide and was encouraged by what I heard.

Holden’s President, Ryan Kubacki, has been at the helm for just over two years.  His background in sales and marketing at AT Kearney (acquired by EDS), Calypso Systems and Microsoft provides him with a solid foundation for the tough challenges ahead.  At this point, he certainly seems up to the task.

Ryan made a point that Holden is solidifying what has been working all these years, while at the same time layering innovative delivery approaches as they continue to strive for sustainable user adoption.

ESR has always viewed Holden as a methodology-centric provider.  What’s new is that Holden is now looking at their place within a company’s total sales approach a bit differently.  In some cases, for example, they are positioning themselves as a solution to be layered “on top of solution selling, for example.”  We’ve not yet spoken with any customers using that hybrid approach, but we intend to.

Matt Martin, VP of Consulting Services, has invested considerable time in both their selling to large accounts as well as transactional territory transactional management offerings.  Holden needed development in those areas to provide a more comprehensive solution.

One of the complaints ESR has regularly voices in our research about sales training companies is that some of the mainstream companies just plain skip the tactical proficiency component of a total sales approach.  They’re much more about the “what” to do, with little attention to “how” to do it.  We’ve seen blank sections of RFP responses where vendors had no solution for some percentage of a sales team that needed help with basic selling skills.  Holden is determined to meet those requirements.  That’s a plus.

Now Holden offers content in new account penetration and sustaining the executive relationship.  We also learned they now offer a  PowerBase business development course, personal productivity workshops and a program in selling through channels.  (Not to take away from Holden, but ESR knows that effective channel management requires more than a program or two and a few dedicated people…)

Holden understands how important coaching is to sustainable sales performance improvement.  They are revamping their sales manager coaching curriculum, and it is “taking off.”  Many years ago I was certified to deliver Holden’s Sales Management program.  The coaching piece was solid back then.

Holden has invested in their eFox tool (powered by White Springs).  It is being componentized and full-blown account management support is forthcoming.  That’s progress as well.

This all may sound terrific to you, if you’re searching out a sales performance improvement provider. I can only warn you that selecting Holden or any other company based upon this or any other one-page write up is precisely the wrong thing to do.  If you are presently, or will be evaluating sales training companies, consider investing in ESR’s upcoming Sales Training Vendor Guide, where we really compare and contrast Holden against 25 other leading providers.

Disclosure:  Holden International subscribes to ESR’s research.

Photo source: © JJAVA – Fotolia.com

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.

Chris Hens, President and COO of White Springs, presented at the Richardson client forum last week.  The subject was in-context sales learning and reinforcement.

With a background in sales training, Chris has a deep understanding of the challenges companies face with respect to sales performance improvement.  White Springs has worked with Complex Sale, Holden, Huthwaite, Miller Heiman, ValuSelling and SPI, among others, to automate sales and opportunity management processes and to connect those to a company’s CRM system.

Richardson has been, and continues to be, a leader in non-traditional (other-than-classroom) learning.  They’ve engaged with White Springs for embedding and integrating their sales learning content into their established tools and business practices.  Chris calls this embedded sales learning. (See graphic, courtesy of White Springs.  Click for full-size.)

Why is this so important?  In order to increase sales effectiveness, more salespeople must complying with the sales process that has been designed for their selling situation.  When that process is modeled in software such as this and they are provided learning reinforcement within that software, it will increase compliance, contributing to sales performance improvement.

Whether you’re shopping for sales training, sales process work, Sales 2.0 tools, or CRM, be certain that your sales processes (qualification, discovery, opportunity management, etc.) are top-of-mind. The vendors you should consider must have the proven ability to support technology-enabled selling and learning.  ES Research has done a considerable amount of research in this area.