Sales Training is Not Enough

Research conducted by Revenue Storm during the Strategic Account Management Association Conference measured 100 Strategic Account Managers in 48 companies and showed they were 35% deficiency in allocating time to creating demand compared to Revenue Storm's best-in-class benchmark. One potential reason of spending less time in this critical area is the lack of competencies that Revenue Storm has identified; namely, managing pipeline, mapping politics, building momentum, establishing executive credibility, providing thought leadership, selling consultatively, messaging and probing. These competency deficiencies are further exacerbated when the market is like it is today.

In order to address these deficiencies, you could assess your sales force against the above competencies and develop specific training curricula to bring them up to best-in-class levels. From my experience, sales training is not enough. One approach would be to align the organization with the sales training initiative by starting with clarifying the Go-to-Market Strategy.

 

The Go-to-Market Strategy provides a direction not only for the sales force but also the rest of the organization. There are four Go-to-Market Strategies that companies can select. In fact, companies can deploy all of them, but each of the Go-to-Market Strategy needs to be aligned to each selling group. The four Go-to-Market Strategies are Transaction focus (example: low cost, commoditized offerings), Process focus (example: solution, one-stop shop selling), Business focus (example: business improvement), Partner focus (example: equal risk reward and gain sharing).

 

Once the Go-to-Market Strategy has been selected, sales process and sales roles including competencies need to be designed and aligned with the Go-to-Market Strategy. Sales management needs to be front and center in this step since they are the key role in successful implementation in the field. Sales management needs to be educated and trained so they can own and lead the implementation process.

 

Assessing the sales force against sales roles and competencies provides at least two important factors: fitting the right people into the right roles and identifying the competency deficiencies for each sales representative. Identifying the sales representative's competency deficiencies provides direction for both specific training and specific coaching from sales management.

 

Other functions need to be aligned to the Go-to-Market Strategy including Marketing, Delivery, Customer Service, Human Resources, Information Technology, Legal and Finance. All of these areas need to be educated and trained on the strategy. Marketing will need to provide specific inputs into sales such as developing market messages and customer case studies. Delivery and Customer Service outputs need to be aligned with the specific strategy. Human Resources function can assist with sales on assessment, hiring, selection and compensation. Information Technology manages the Customer Relationship Management application and needs to be aligned with the Go-to-Market strategy, not the other way around. Legal and Finance will also need to be aligned with the strategy. Large companies have a Sales Operations function that also assists and aligns the sales organization. When theses functions are aligned with the Go-to-Market Strategy, the company will avert the often complaint from sales forces that it's much more difficult working with internal processes compared to working with customers.

 

This holistic approach starts with the Go-to-Market Strategy and purposely aligns all functions with the Go-to-Market Strategy. So it's not just about sales training, it's about building an aligned engine that can provide fast acceleration without the drag of sub-optimized, legacy, silo functions.

Bob Malandruccolo is the founder and principal owner of Sales Force Effectiveness Consulting and a Distributor of Revenue Storm. His purpose is to use his passion and expertise to assist and educate others to optimize their sales orgaanizations. With over twenty-five years of practical business, management and consulting experience in sales and marketing, Bob has worked with a broad range of clients from Fortune 100 corporations to small firms with special emphasis on sales and marketing process implementation. He has worked closely with his clients through hundreds of successful engagements and implementations across multiple industries.

Prior to founding Sales Force Effectiveness Consulting, Bob was a Principal in Mercer's Human Capital Business, specializing in Sales Effectiveness. Based in Chicago, Bob worked with his clients' sales organizations to achieve improved business impact with special emphasis on sales compensation along with sales coverage design and implementation. He was actively involved in designing solutions in the areas of sales force sizing, sales force organizational structures, roles, training, automation, forecasting, goal setting and change management.

Prior to joining Mercer, Bob served as a consulting practice manager in a firm that provides sales and marketing effectiveness training and consulting to high-tech companies. Earlier, Bob founded and managed a consulting firm based on his extensive technical sales experience with a multinational chemical company. He has also taught courses in management strategies at Governors State University of Illinois.

Bob has a BS in chemical engineering from Northwestern University and completed his MBA studies at the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University. He has completed several post-graduate courses in the Business Economics Ph.D. program at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Bob is a frequent speaker, member of World @ Work and was recently cited as the "Ask the Expert" in World @ Work's Sales Compensation Quarterly.

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