Because of today’s strong economy, CEOs are considering investing in their sales efforts to increase market share and position themselves to be tomorrow’s industry leaders. Billions of dollars are spent every year on training to improve sales results. Why should leaders not invest in sales training until they evaluate their sales force top to bottom?
There are many reasons why sales efforts are not succeeding at the optimum rate and training may not be the answer for increased sales:
- Lack of clearly defined values that the CEO is committed to reinforcing
- Lack of a unified sales strategy
- Lack of sales goals aligned to company goals
- Lack of talent and territory alignment
- Lack of deployment in optimal modeling – inside sales, account managers, specialists, outside sales, national account sales, etc.
- Sales leaders who lack the skills to adequately coach, mentor, recruit, manage the pipeline of opportunities, and hold the sales team accountable.
- Lack of unified sales process that is being utilized and coached
- Lack of CRM to adequately manage the pipeline of opportunities
- Unclear communication of expectations of the sales leaders and sales force
- Lack of accountability and consequences when performance falls short
- Lack of systematic and targeted hiring process to select the best talent
- Lack of pre-hire sales specific assessments to add objective data to the hiring decisions
- Lack of consistently deployed, well designed onboarding process to make sure new salespeople succeed quickly
- Lack of clearly communicated and reinforced coaching process and expectations of sales managers to spend time in the field coaching reps
- Inadequate or incorrect compensation models that do not drive the optimum behavior and results
- Lack of marketing intelligence and guidance
- Lack of sales support that frees up salespeople to focus on selling
- Lack of user friendly and well integrated sales tools
- Poor sales culture
These are some of the pieces of the larger puzzle that make high performing sales teams soar.
Why not evaluate your sales force with a comprehensive sales force evaluation to find out what your sales organization needs to address before spending money on training that may not have a lasting impact on the bottom line?
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve spent most of my career providing sales training and it makes a difference. Training that teaches the specific skills required to execute the type of selling executed at your chosen Degree of Customer Focus® is eventually required. But I’ve learned over the years that there are many things that need to be in place to make sure it has a lasting impact.
Contact us and we will provide objective feedback – a comprehensive sales force evaluation – so you can know exactly what you need to address – and in what order – to maximize your sales potential.