You Won’t Believe What’s New In Sales Training!

For those of you who follow the ups and downs, ins and outs of the sales training industry, here is the latest, as of today, April 1, 2009:

Miller Heiman and furniture manufacturer Herman Miller have announced a merger.  The new business, to be called Herman Miller Heiman, will be offering a new, upgraded version of [...]

My 2009 Word of The Year, So Far

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 [...]

Should You Spend Your Money On Sales 2.0 Or Sales Training?

Sales training is more than 100 years old.  With few exceptions, it’s not very sexy.  Many salespeople believe (PDF) they’ve been through enough of it to last a lifetime.  For many reasons, most of their managers don’t see any value, so they take a tactical, event-based approach just to check the “trained my people this [...]

Sales 2.0: Does It Enable Effective Selling Or Is It Yet Another Decoy?

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 [...]

New LinkedIn Feature: Share Your Presentations

I subscribe to Chris Brogan’s blog.  His recent post about LinkedIn applications compelled me to spend a bit of time on the site.
In the past I’ve been very possessive about presentations I’ve done.  Now I’ve decided to share a bit more.  One of the new LinkedIn apps allows me to do just that.  There are a [...]

An Authentic Sales 2.0 Killer App for Selling Competitively

Last June I wrote a post containing my Sales 2.0 Competitive Knowledge Wishlist.  I’d expect that any salesrep or manager who really knows how to employ advanced competitive selling strategies and tactics would love to have the Sales 2.0 capabilities in that list.  We’ll, we are apparently closer than I thought to realizing that dream.
I spent some time once [...]

Joe The Salesrep and CRM User Adoption

Lee Allgood, a colleague from my days consulting with ERP provider MAPICS, sent me an email referencing a March 2008 survey performed by Sand Hill Group and Neochange.
Although the survey looked at enterprise software success from the software company’s perspective, some of the findings resonate with what we know about process alignment and user adoption related [...]

Industry-Focused Sales Training Is More Than Buzzwords

A strategic and comprehensive approach to sales effectiveness must include, among other programs:

New hire training

Product training 

Sales skills training (basic to advanced, as appropriate)

Sales-enablement tools and technology training (CRM, Sales 2.0 tools, podcasts, internal knowledge management systems, etc.)

Other specialized training (business training, creating proposals, cold-calling, working with business partners, as examples)

Technical training (for some situations) — basics of [...]

iPhones and (Sales) Education

I’ve written a fair amount about Sales 2.0 and technology-enabled selling.  I’ve also discussed my concerns about generation and technology gaps between younger and older sales professionals. 
A recent article in BusinessWeek discusses how educators are changing their tune on mobile cell phones.  Up until now, most educators saw cell phones and PDAs as a distraction. 
According to the [...]

Web 2.0 Adoption Stats: Disappointing or a Call to Action?

I read an article on Inc.com about a recent survey performed by Robert Half.  According to the results of the polling of 1,400 CIOs (from companies with 100 or more employees), 60 percent of them currently have (47%) or are planning to deploy (13%) online training.  “At the same time, most respondents were less interested in [...]