Sales Training RFPs

I want to share with you some more of my recent experience and related opinions regarding sales training vendors and RFPs.*  (See my May 23rd post about RFPs.  If you haven’t read it and are interested in how sales training vendors—arguably world-class experts in managing RFP response strategies—reacted to one RFP, you should.) 
Before I go into where [...]

Sales Training Vendors and RFPs

Among other things, we work with companies in facilitating an understanding of their own sales performance improvement requirements as well as guiding them through the sales training vendor selection process where appropriate.  
One client of ours issued RFPs to a long list of six sales training vendors.  The RFP included significant sales process work, sales training [...]

Event-Based vs. Extended Learning

Yesterday I interviewed Tom Roth (CEO) and Ed Emde (SVP) from Wilson Learning as part of my sales thought-leader podcast series.  (Click the tab at the top of the page to see the podcasts that we’ve already published.  They’re free!)
Every reputable sales trainer and training firm knows that a stand-alone training event doesn’t deliver in significant, long-term, sustainable value.  Tom quoted a study [...]

The Fragmented Sales Training Industry

I get calls periodically from private equity fund managers and other investment bankers about the demographics of the sales training industry.  Journalists I speak with are interested in it as well. 
What’s so noteworthy?  The degree of fragmentation of the sales training industry.  It’s certainly not the most fragmented.  Law firms are considerably more so, for [...]

Sales Training Companies from a Unique Perspective (Part 2)

Before I go any further, let me again state that there are a lot of effective, high value, ethical sales training companies out there.  They have long lists of customers who have managed to dramatically improve their teams’ sales performance.
Stealing
Let me dig a bit into a point I made in Part 1—the fact that some [...]

Sales Training Companies from a Unique Perspective (Part 1)

I’ve been on all sides of the sales training business:

Class participant as a sales rep—many different programs over numbers of years;
Buyer of sales training as a VP of sales;
Buyer of sales management training;
Inhouse sales trainer—my own content as well as a reseller for another company;
Outsourced sales trainer—again, my own content as well as a reseller [...]

Sales Training Company Revenue Models

I was on the phone today with an associate from a private equity firm. 
He found ESR on the web and was interested in our opinion on a number of topics
as a foundation for his firm acquiring one or more sales training companies.  He
asked how sales training companies were generally doing during this
recession.  He pondered how a services-based company could weather these types
of [...]