Over time, I realized that this can be a subject that can make a big impact on the Customer’s Sales KPIs or it can just become a “tick in the box” activity for the customer. It all depends on who is your Sales Training/consulting partner.
This article is to help you identify a few filters to help you decide on the right partner.
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Are you treating symptoms or causes? if you are clear about your requirement and also about the solution i.e you know the content of the module, and just need a vendor to fulfill it. That means you need a chemist kind of Sales Consulting Company. However, when you have symptoms, but are not sure about the causes and want to treat the causes, then you would need a specialist doctor kind of Sales Training/ Sales consulting partner. These specialist partners would go deeper in their discovery, know/share industry best practices and suggest an intervention that would stick ( post workshop) and not just remain as a “one more session” for your organization.
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Are you looking for trainers or consultants? There is a difference between both profiles. A trainer need not be from B2B Sales background and can still do a good job when he/she comes and delivers the content. However, participants find more receptivity when they know that the trainer empathizes with the participants’ sales/customer world and has a background in sales/sales management experience.
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Ask your Sales Training Company about their thoughts to retain the learning.
Most of the training doesn’t stick: You need a few things to ensure training sticks and you find value in your investment in Sales Interventions.
1st – Sales intervention should have both- “Process + Skill”. Only focusing on one does not work to imbibe this as learning across. The learning will fizzle out in a few days and your “Best Talent” will become better and “the rest of the team” will go back to its original state.
2nd – Involvement of Sales managers and sales leader – Manages/leaders can make or break any sales organization. Their buying to “Sales Interventions” is important to ensure cadence is maintained post-Sales Training / Sales Consulting workshop.
3rd – We would recommend using the new learning at least 5 times post-workshop. This is where few things will fail but eventually, things would get ingrained in day to day work of the sales team.
4th – Reinforcement – This is the most important part without which the ball gets dropped. Ensure your Sales Training/Consulting company remains engaged with participants for at least 2-3 months post-workshop.
5th – As a leader, review the new learning post 3 months. If convinced that it's working, try to integrate the new learning/tools into your sales CRM. It will help institutionalize it as a common language across the sales organization.
Ensure your sales intervention partner guides you with the above best practices and helps you avoid the pitfalls. Your time, money, and resources are important to ensure the training doesn’t become a meet & greet tick-in-the-box activity for your sales team.
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Specialists Vs generalists partners – Unless you have a past view about the quality of generalists, it's always advisable to go with specialist companies who remain focused on “B2B Sales” instead of generic training/consulting companies. Over time, you would realize that generalist training companies do the training whereas specialist B2B Sales focused companies positively impact your sales KPIs and the life of your sales colleagues.
There are other standard criteria that your L&D/procurement team uses to shortlist the right company. We have excluded them and added the above four points as they normally get missed out and in our experience, these are the key ones that would make a difference to your Sales KPIs.