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 to keep their sales opportunities from coming down to price.  That tendency is considerably worse right now than it’s been in previous years.  They have superior service, a stellar reputation, a world-class team, enviable financial viability, and other significant customer-focused advantages. But in many situations, it’s a challenge to get the customer to acknowledge the direct link from all those capabilities to measurable business value for them.  The client is becoming considerably better a competing, employing advanced selling skills, strategies and tactics for overcoming price disadvantage, when it exists.  Even though demand is up, commoditization is the biggest challenge.  All in all, a challenging year.  I believe they’ll get through this pretty well, with everything considered.
• A smaller client is facing other challenges.  They are doing well at demand creation.  A strong marketing function is serving the sales team well.  However, they’re facing the all-too-common 80/20 situation.  The 20% of the reps that are bringing in the deals are top quality.  The company has to make a move to redeploy the reps who can’t be trained and coached into a higher level of sales productivity.  Also, the company is relatively process deficient.  They possess a single, high-level Powerpoint slide that represents their selling process, but it is in no way sufficient to drive consistent performance across an entire sales team.  The good news is that a strong management team is determined to overcome the challenges they have.  We’re working with the CEO who will be driving the transition to a more effective sales capability.  They aren’t looking for shortcuts.
• One Fortune 500 company is coaching us through creation of a collaborative proposal for ESR to perform an assessment of their global sales approach and capabilities.  That will result in an RFP and a vendor evaluation and selection process.  They need to transition from the commodity approach they employ now to a more collaborative and consultative relationships with customers.  They are seeking a long-term sales training/consulting partner.  We are delighted that they are taking a strategic approach to sales effectiveness. They aren’t looking for shortcuts either.

The Brooks Group: Getting A (Second) Life.

The Brooks Group surprised ESR when we commenced coverage of them for our last Sales Training Vendor Guide.  They scored very well in both solution breadth and solution effectiveness, even against many of the bigger, more well-known training companies.

Al Case, Vivian and I did an analyst briefing call with the Brooks Group management team earlier this week.  For all the details, you’ll have to wait for ESR’s upcoming Guide.

I will share with you that Brooks is determined to continue being rated in the top tier.  Their advancements in prospect nurturing, measurement, post-program reinforcement (especially coaching), distance learning and technology-enabled learning (the image shows their soon-to-be-released Second Life training facility—click to enlarge) put them in the short-list category for certain companies with certain sales training requirements.

ESR believes that a Second Life training capability at this point is a nice-to-have for a small percentage of sales training buyers.  But as sales training moves further away from the three-day live classroom model, training teams continue to become more diverse, and travel budgets are cut, if not eliminated, Second Life and other such platforms will become the norm.  Although the Brooks Group isn’t the only training company to offer a Second Life implementation, they are absolutely doing the right thing moving in that direction.

Finally, this all may sound terrific to you, if you’re searching out a sales performance improvement provider. I can only warn you that selecting The Brooks Group 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 The Brooks Group against 25 other leading providers.

Disclosure: The Brooks Group subscribes to ESR’s research.