Adapted from interview with Dario Priolo, Chief Strategy Officer for Richardson and Michael Rochelle, Chief Strategy Officer for Brandon Hall Group Part three of our series on applying key practices in learning and development to sales training. Just like people and snowflakes, no two companies are alike. And by extension, no sales organization is identical. And before you ask, there is no magic bullet formula to set your sales organization on the right path or cure all ills. There are too many variables, both internal and external, to be considered. So when asking the question, "What drives sales teams to perform?" you can certainly expect different answers, or at least differing priorities, among a range of responses. However, there are best practices and principles to guide you on your way towards improving your salesforce. Following is a list of our top 10 areas that contribute to driving - and if done poorly, draining - sales performance. What Drives Sales Teams to Perform - 10 Best Practices  1) The Right Strategy Know your company’s strategy as well as short- and long-term business objectives. What’s being sold to customers? What competitive advantage do you hold in the marketplace? (Be brutally honest when answering that - otherwise, you’ll be wasting your time.) Have your sales objectives changed? What do you need your salesforce to do differently (e.g., more of this, less of that) to support your company’s growth targets? Consider now, at this high level, what performance is necessary to achieve those goals. Then reverse-engineer that process to break down the elements that will either make that possible, or stand in your way. 2) The Right Processes and Tools In sales, time is money. Processes and tools helps to drive efficiency and productivity, ultimately helping to make sales more predictable and more replicable. Part of this will be driven by your corporate culture. Is yours nimble and results-driven, enabling sales to move fluidly towards a sale? Or is your culture very bureaucratic, slow to make decisions and cautious about going too fast? Focus on helping your sales teams to be most effective while still running an administratively smooth operation. 3) Skills and Behaviors Don’t think about your people. Imagine you’re starting a new business and were going to hire the ideal salesforce to sell your products and services. What skills would they have and behaviors would they exhibit when calling on prospects and serving customers? What core competencies will drive reps to peak performance? 4) The Right Talent Now think about your people. There is often ambiguity in sales roles, but you must be crystal clear about the expectations for sales roles and the nuances of each. The more you can drill down and define each role the better off you’ll be. What does it take to be successful in that role? For example, a "hunter" role is very different than that of a "farmer." The behavioral profile for each is very different, which requires you to assess your salesforce to determine who possesses the innate competencies to fit the roles. Who are your high performers? What makes them great and how can you get that performance from everyone else? Who doesn’t "get it" and will need extensive training or coaching, or to be sacrificed and replaced by someone with better potential? 5) Link Sales Training to Desired Performance Outcomes Don’t just offer training for the sake of training, and don’t just do things the way you’ve always done them. Partner with your learning and development leaders to craft training that is meaningful to your reps’ bottom-line performance. Ensure that the skills and behaviors being taught will directly contribute to how they’re expected to perform. Identify any critical gaps in skills and behaviors and figure out how to close them - fast. 6) Technology Enablement An earlier post in this series addressed the role of technology in sales training solutions. There are certainly benefits to leveraging technology throughout the sales process (including training and development opportunities). Technology can make your reps more efficient in researching prospects; help them connect with clients and prospects virtually before committing to costly and time-consuming travel; sift through mounds of data; and prepare cutting-edge presentations to "wow" potential buyers. However, for each benefit, there is a possible distraction if the whiz-bang effect is too over the top, or if the reps don’t know how to effectively incorporate the tech into their work and pitches. 7) Sales Management Sales managers play such a pivotal role in the performance of their salesforce. The goal is to have sales managers with both the skill and the will to reinforce and support any sort of change or developmental effort. There’s a direct correlation between leadership engagement and sales training initiatives and results. There has been plenty written over the years about how employees more often leave their company because of a bad boss or manager, not because of pay. Encourage your sales managers to be more than numbers crunchers and schedule minders. The best sales managers coach their reps towards the desired performance. 8) Sales Incentive Program As a direct follow up from the previous point, don’t assume that good managers mean you don’t need to pay well - money still talks. The critical concern is to make sure that you reward the desired behaviors and outcomes. A common disconnect occurs when you’ve changed your strategy and thus expectations for your sales reps, yet your incentive program goes untouched, thereby continuing to reward the old behaviors. What does great performance look like in your utopian world? Provide very specific outcomes and drive towards very specific goals. 9) Metrics and Measurement Identify metrics that allow you measure and move the herd in the middle of your salesforce. In sales teams, we too often focus on trying to make great sales people better and helping laggards to improve. Consider a performance bell curve of the bottom 20% (I don’t know if they are staying or not) and the top 20% (I really do not have to spend a lot of time with them - they are high performing). Focus on creating metrics for the middle 60%, which will allow for sustainable change within that "herd." These metrics don’t have to be big numbers. For example, out of 100 sales people, you have 20 you are not sure about, 20 you are absolutely sure about, and 60 in the middle that you would like to be more sure about. If you can get 5% to 15% changes with your return on your training within that group of 60, that is going to give you the most momentous change in revenue. Organizations need to think about metrics that are attainable and achievable by targeting the vast majority of them, the middle of that bell curve of sales reps, and look for incremental change with the larger group, which really gets to a bigger number in sales. 10) Communication and Feedback Astute observers have probably noted that products and promotion were excluded from this list. These certainly play a part in a salesforce’s success. But a salesperson’s biggest opportunity to influence these areas is in communication and feedback loops up the chain of command and with colleagues in product development and marketing. The better the relationships among these groups, the more synchronized their approach and receptivity to feedback (both good and bad), which can influence design modifications or emphasizing difference promotional aspects of the products or services. The sales person is usually in the best spot to collect input from customers (why they love it) and prospects (why they passed on your offering for a competitor’s). If the relationships are adversarial or nonexistent, then improvements will be slow coming, and sales performance will stall. What drives your sales teams to perform? Tell us in the comments section below. If you missed the first posts in this series, please click on a link below. What Is the Role of Technology in Effective Sales Training Essential Ingredients in Creating Effective Training for Sales Teams COMPLIMENTARY RESEARCH REPORT Download a copy of our newest research report, Content Marketing and Sales Effectiveness  The post What Drives Sales Teams to Perform? appeared first on The Richardson Sales Excellence Review™.

Richardson Wins Two Stevie® Awards for Management & New Product Categories in the 2013 American Business Awards Richardson is very excited to announce that we were presented with two Stevie Awards at the Stevie Award ceremonies in San Francisco, on September 16th, 2013. Richardson’s President and CEO, David DiStefano, was awarded with a Gold Stevie Award for Upstart Company of the Year. Mr. DiStefano was recognized for his ground-breaking organizational achievements, helping lead Richardson to record growth in 2012. Among the many drivers for Richardson’s improved performance were new organizational roles,  a three-year internal culture initiative, expansion into new territories including China, and the additions of new sales training and enablement services Collaborative Account Development™, Selling with Insights™, Richardson Quick Check™,  and Change Leadership™ programs. Richardson also won a Silver Stevie Award for New Product or Service of the Year under the category of Corporate Learning/Workforce Development Solution for its mobile learning reinforcement tool, Richardson QuickCheck™. Richardson QuickCheck™ is an application designed for mobile phones and tablets that delivers daily, bite-sized knowledge and training to today’s on-the-go sales professional. It uses a proven approach to learning reinforcement to optimize the investment in training. "It is an absolute honor and privilege to be recognized for these two Stevie Awards," said David DiStefano.  "We will continue to innovate, lead and push the envelope to better understand today’s marketplace and provide our clients with solutions that truly affect the performance of their business.  I extend my sincere congratulations to the Richardson team and every one of our clients. Collectively they are the foundation of our business success." The Stevie Awards were created to honor and generate public recognition of the achievements and positive contributions of organizations and business people worldwide.  Beginning with The American Business Awards in 2002, The International Business Awards in 2003, The Stevie Awards for Women in Business in 2004, and the Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service in 2006, their mission is to raise the profile of exemplary organizations and individuals among the press, the business community, and the general public.  In short order the Stevie has become one of the world’s most coveted awards. The American Business Awards are judged each year by more than 200 executives nationwide. To learn more about Richardson’s Awards and Honors, please contact Jim Brodo at jim.brodo@richardson.com. The post Richardson Wins Two Stevie® Awards for Management & New Product Categories in the 2013 American Business Awards appeared first on The Richardson Sales Excellence Review™.

Would Your Sales Training Earn Your Customer’s Seal of Approval? The Customer is King This is still true, right?  The phrase seems less than politically correct these days (with "king" versus "queen" or "royalty"), but if you conduct an internet search for "the customer is king," you’ll find over 201 million returns in about 0.62 seconds.  It’s still a popular phrase. I don’t find myself quoting the Urban Dictionary much in my business life, but I have to admit, I peeked at their search return for the phrase and thought it was interesting.  In part: "A corporate cliché meaning that the direction of a business is ultimately determined by its customers. The business is compelled to sell products and services that customers want/need, at a price they are willing to pay, and provide an acceptable level of service, otherwise customers will look elsewhere and they [the business] will not make money." I also came across this SlideShare from Salesforce.com’s Desk and enjoyed their presentation, "50 Customer Service Quotes You NEED to Hang in Your Office."  Inspiring stuff. The Royal Family Gets a Lot of Attention We seem to spend a lot of energy around our customers and serving them well.  We have: Customer research Big data and customer analytics Customer insights Customer engagement management Customer relationship management Customer loyalty Customer valuation Lifetime value of a customer Customer value proposition (CVP) Voice of the customer Customer-centric approaches So with all of this attention devoted to the royal customer, one would think that our business lives revolve around them.  In some companies, I think this is true.  In others, there is more lip service than customer service.  I am not going to glorify or defile anyone in this post, though.  I want you to think about something else, specifically, about your sales training approach, at your company. How Do You Walk the Talk with Your Sales Training? I would like to tell you that I was always pure about following my own advice here, but I have developed an annoying habit of trying to be more transparent than average.  Twenty-five years ago, I used this script and plenty of others like it: "Mr. Prospect, let me ask you something. If you stepped out your front door and $300 was lying on your front porch, would you bend down and pick it up?  Me, too. That’s all I’m really trying to do here today… help you put $300 back in your pocket each month. Wouldn’t it make sense to take 15 minutes and see if we can do that?" I also spent a lot of time rehearsing product pitches, tie-downs, 101 ways to close the sale (the J. Douglas Edwards "door-knob close" and the Ben Franklin close were among them), and snappy phrases to overcome common objectives.  My heart was in the right place, because I really did believe I was helping my customers, but I was a certainly a product of the sales training of the time.  Eventually I came across Linda Richardson’s books, Mack Hanan’s work, and took a Dale Carnegie course, and got myself on a better track that felt right, too.  So I’m confident that in the past 18 years, people who have worked for me have seen me live by this principle: The litmus test of your customer focus in sales training is the inverse of the panic you would feel if your sales training materials ended up in the hands of your customers.   In other words: If your panic level would be very low, your customer focus is likely high If your panic or embarrassment would be off the charts, you might want to reconsider your approach. So, go ahead, ask yourself. The Customer Focus Reality Check How would YOU feel if your internal sales training materials were shipped to your customers for their review or feedback? Would you be proud, or concerned? Would your customers see an open, transparent, authentic attempt at uncovering issues, challenges, opportunities and needs that you could address to help them? Would they read about your attempts to foster a value-added dialogue that helps you earn real credibility and trust, and their business, of course, but through a focus on them, and solving their problems? Or, would your customer see a series of techniques, tricks, phrases, and methods devised primarily to manipulate them? Would the tone of the materials be "all about you?" - your company, products, and how to sell them? Or about your customers, their needs, and how to best meet or address them? Would customers see their perspectives and feedback represented, from your own research with them and win-loss analysis, highlighting what was truly important to them?  Or would they only see sales "war stories" and hear how top reps used a special technique to "triumph over the customer" to win the sale? Would the approach toward selling and negotiating be consultative, above-board and focused on creating win-win solutions, or be about winning at all costs? Would they read all sorts of military or sports phrases about winning the battle, "overcoming" their objections, and other adversarial mindsets? What would they think of your company after reading your sales training materials?  Would you earn their seal of approval? Now What? If you are pleased with your answers to the above questions, I tip my hat to you.  That doesn’t automatically mean your content is right or your materials will improve sales results, but it does mean you have the right focus.  You can always adjust the content to replicate what top-producers do, with the same focus. If you are not comfortable with the answers inside your head, it is time to have an authentic dialogue inside your company.  Your customers will thank you for it, even if they never actually see your materials or know what happened.  Eventually, they will  feel the difference and do more business with you and that is the REAL seal of approval. Related Reading: Customer Care Skills Win-loss Review Posts Losing A Mentor: A Fond Farewell to Mack Hanan Questions As Weapons! —————————————- To learn more about Richardson’s comprehensive sales training solutions, please visit us at http://www.richardson.com The post Would Your Sales Training Earn Your Customer’s Seal of Approval? appeared first on The Richardson Sales Excellence Review™.

Why New Client Acquisition is a Lot like Flounder Fishing This past summer, I spent some time fishing for flounder. While I was moderately successful, I still had plenty of time to think about the similarities between flounder fishing and new client acquisition. Consider the ways in which both work. Step One, Market Identification - If you are going for flounder, you have to go where the flounder go. How do you identify these targets? 1)      Guess. Just throw your line in the water and hope for the best 2)      Follow other fisherman, see where they hang out, and fish near them 3)      Conduct research on the Web and social media sites to find where flounder have been hitting Similarly, when attempting to acquire new clients, you need to identify the market, then the territory, and finally the specific targets. Step Two, Create Awareness - Once you identify where you want to fish, you have to use the right bait to attract flounder. Simply put, you set your boat in a certain area and let the tide move you and the fishing line, in a tactic called drifting. You throw out your line, which has bait and a weight, and you hope to capture the flounder’s attention while the weight drifts on the bottom of the ocean. In today’s business environment, we essentially follow a similar process. We begin the new client acquisition process with a message - our bait - to attract the interest of the buyer. We then use a variety of tactics, like Search Engine Optimization, Search Engine Marketing, content marketing, public relations, and advertising to get our message out into the marketplace. Then we wait, hoping to be in the right place at the right time to get a nibble from the buyer. Step Three, Catching the Big One - If we have selected the right fishing area and used the right bait, then it should be only a matter of time before the fish bite. Even then, our work is not done.  We have to reel them in carefully, or they can get away. We don’t know whatis on the end of the line until we land it in the boat. It could be a huge flounder or a little shark stealing the bait. In New Jersey, to keep a flounder, the fish has to be over 18 inches. Now think about new client acquisition. After we have developed a targeted message and sent out the communication, we sit and wait until we get a response, or a bite. Once we do, our work still is not over. We have to set nurturing activities in motion to reel them in. At first, we don’t know what the opportunity is. Is the lead a keeper or a time-stealer? We must further qualify it using our criteria before it can officially be labeled a Sales Qualified Lead, or "keeper." So I am a Fisherman! The similarities between fishing and new client acquisition are interesting to think about. In fact, these basic processes can be used for many areas of business and everyday life. The best part of this aha! moment for me was that, for many years, I had trouble explaining to my young kids exactly what I did for a living. Then I thought about the similarities to fishing. I walked them through the fishing analogy, and they finally got it.  My ten year old said, "Now I understand, you fish for businesses; you are a business fisherman." I can’t wait to explain this one at the next Parents Day at school. ———————————— Selling with Insights™ Richardson’s Selling with Insights™ is a customized sales training solution that teaches your sales reps advanced preparation techniques and dialogue skills to effectively present insights, create needs and shape the customer’s thinking, add more value, differentiate your solution, and build credibility as a trusted business partner. Richardson’s Selling with Insights™ program specifically targets modes of selling that we have identified in our work with top clients and industry experts, especially Create and Shape.  In these modes, reps share insights, but what they share and how they share it depends on the appropriate response to the buyer’s location in their process.  The goal in each mode is to increase your ability to influence decisions and win. To learn more, please click here. The post Why New Client Acquisition is a Lot like Flounder Fishing appeared first on The Richardson Sales Excellence Review™.

Sales Training Programs: Mission Impossible or Mission Accomplished? Let’s face it.  For learning and development leaders without a sales background, being assigned to develop sales training programs can feel like the kiss of death.  Even for seasoned sales training leaders, it isn’t a walk in the park. When you consider that… ES Research Group, Inc. estimates that 80 to 85 percent of sales training programs produce no long-term impact (after 90 days) and 20 to 33 percent of sales people do not have the capabilities to do their job Sixty-five percent of top sales leaders surveyed by CSO Insights said their top objective for the year was capturing new accounts, yet 67 percent of those same leaders felt that their sales team "needs improvement" in generating leads ASTD’s recent State of Sales Training research reported that half of the respondents felt that 50 percent or less of the sales training programs they received was relevant to their job Sales leaders don’t count "butts in seats" or care much about level 1 "smile sheet" ratings… they want sales to actually increase after training… …it can seem like Mission Impossible. Layer the difficulty of diagnosing performance levers and driving change in a complex organization, or the overwhelming nature of all the moving parts in the Sales Performance Ecosystem, and it can become even more daunting. Effective Learning Systems There is a way to tame the beast. You can follow a system and produce great results for your internal sales clients and your company.  In the process, you can establish yourself as an organizational leader who deserves the coveted "seat at the table." How? There are multiple ways, but my favorite recipe is to create what I call an "effective learning system."  I spoke about this at the ASTD 2013 International Conference and Exhibition and at a local Dallas ASTD Lunch and Learn recently, and the concepts resonate with learning leaders and sales performance pros at all levels.  It also works. The concept, simply, is this: Create the right Content Use sound instructional Design principles Engage sales Managers in multiple ways Plan purposefully to orchestrate training Transfer Foster sales Coaching excellence Get the right metrics and Measures in place Plug into the organization’s larger Performance Management system Integrate and Align with other business leaders to develop and execute a Change plan Create the Right Content The best instructional design, the best learning system, the best plans for transfer… none of it makes any difference if the content, when used, won’t get results.  If you want to improve performance through sales training programs, you need to start with the right knowledge and skills, and the accurate judgment about when to use them.  If you’ve been reading my posts for a while, you know I’m a big fan of top-producer practices and comparative analysis. Analyze your sales force Document the validated patterns of behaviors in your top-producers (exemplary performers) Compare their behaviors to the other performers Create Continue | Start | Stop lists and use the top-producer practices to fuel your content for training courses Use sales managers as a content source, too… we’ll touch on that in a moment Use Sound Instructional Design Principles This topic alone is deserving of a series of posts, if not a book.  See this Instructional Design Primer for more detail, but… Focus on outcomes and use the top-producer inspired content Teach the prerequisite knowledge first and use elearning or virtual ILT to prepare participants for any ILT skill practice Chunk, sequence and layer content with reinforcement and assessments built-in to increase retention Reserve the time spent in ILT for complex topics and skills/behaviors with intense skill practice, exercises, activities, and role plays with feedback loops Design for instructors to coach, shape and redirect learner behavior as much as possible in the time they spend with your participants Engage Sales Managers in Multiple Ways Frontline sales managers are the strongest performance lever you have for improving sales performance. Involve vetted managers, who were usually top sales producers before promotion, in your data set of top-producers, as appropriate Gain sales manager buy-in to your rep content upfront, because you need them to reinforce it later Assess top-producing sales managers and also build sales manager training Develop very-specific programs to help managers coach and support the rep training programs Teach managers how to train, coach, and develop reps - if possible, certify the managers on the rep course content and coaching - you need them talking the talk, and walking the walk Purposefully Plan Training Transfer Training transfer, or the widespread use of what is taught in class once back on-the-job, doesn’t happen by accident (except with a small percent of highly-dedicated, learning-oriented and ambitious sales reps).  You need to orchestrate it. Build training transfer plans into your learning process Use managers to reinforce training (throughout the curriculum, whenever possible) and encourage the use of performance-support tools Build those performance-support tools into other systems and use post-learning reinforcement and assessments to increase retention after class (mobile reinforcement is the latest rage and more importantly, can work very well) Use social/community tools and consider gamification principles to improve retention and reinforcement Connect reps and managers before, during and after training, with expectations for each, at every stage Foster Sales Coaching Excellence This is part of engaging your managers and fostering transfer, but important enough to call out separately. Research has proven two things about coaching … it makes a tremendous difference in performance, and yet it’s still not done frequently enough or well enough. Train your managers first on the rep programs, and then train the managers how to coach Have managers track rep performance throughout any prerequisite courses Have managers attend training with their reps, as a coach, when possible (yes, I’m aware of the adult learning theory arguments against this, as well as the "managers can’t afford the time away" smokescreen, and will debate both vigorously with anyone) Develop manager toolkits or "meetings-in-a-box" to help managers use tailored, post-program sales coaching Develop ongoing support for coaching and sales manager development - coach the coaches and develop a coaching culture Get the Right Metrics and Measures in Place You can use measurement for both your learning efforts and to track, report, predict and influence results. Agree on leading and lagging indicators for learning progress and post-class performance progress and define verifiable outcomes for both Report on progress throughout training and develop reporting that compares learner performance pre- and post-class. (Consider gamification and leader boards for an improvement race.) Identify leading indicators for performance and track and report them to better predict performance levels, and reinforce or coach as needed to ensure improvement Report progress and challenges regularly and transparently to business leaders and stakeholders - foster a shared responsibility for results between all stakeholders: trainees, their managers, trainers, training leadership, sales leadership, and senior leaders (each own various pieces of "sales performance improvement") Plug into the Performance Management System This is a separate and special call-out from the below integration efforts.   In organizations, new ways of working (replacing the status quo) rarely become "how we do things around here" on their own.  Work your way into the fabric of the business. Establish a cadence of check ins, review of reports, activity, results, and methods - based on a mix of reporting, dialogue and observation - make it a habit and expectation Managers coach and counsel rep performance as needed, holding reps accountable Senior managers hold sales managers accountable Establish goals, MBOs, or performance metrics that are woven into regular performance reviews Integrate and Align with a Change Plan Change rarely happens by luck.  The larger and more critical the change, the more likely that achieving it will require change planning, change management, and change leadership. Link training to business strategy and involve stakeholders Ask for top-down support and proactively suggest ways to help Work with stakeholders to create a change leadership and change management plans Communicate plans, rationales, goals, risks, measurements, and impacts through regular and open communication Share success stories and find and address issues quickly Mission Accomplished! It is possible.  It’s not always easy, but if anyone could do it, we’d all be earning a lot less.  One challenge, I know, is to garner the attention and focus required to create and sustain an effective learning system.  It’s far different than just creating and launching a course or curriculum. Often, people nod their heads at the principles but shy away from the actual work involved, or the commitments it requires (this especially applies, oddly, to the top-producer analysis and investing equally in sales management - the two very things that yield the best results). People’s intentions are usually great, but the crazy-busy world we work in, often finds us focusing on the urgent, to the detriment of the important.  I’ve found it helps to remind leaders of shared goals, risks of not doing it, how the investment could be maximized instead, and the power of aligned action in getting phenomenal results (which everyone - or at least most successful people - want to be a part of). I wish you the best of success as you work to create effective learning systems at your company and would enjoy hearing about your successes or troubleshooting your challenges. As always, I’ll leave you with some additional related reading. Related Reading Transform Sales Results with Effective Learning Systems Sales Performance Management Accountable Sales Enablement 7 Ways to Kill Sales Training (Note:  6 out of 7’s not bad, as they say - see the comments) Are You Looking at Sales Training Strategically? ————————————————————————————— Click the following to learn more about Richardson’ award winning customized sales training programs. The post Sales Training Programs: Mission Impossible or Mission Accomplished? appeared first on The Richardson Sales Excellence Review™.

Video Blog - Custom Sales Training: Why is it Important? Changing behavior within an organization is a continuous learning process that requires alignment and support for the sales reps. In order to sustain the change, sales leaders must build a bridge for reps to learn the new skills and behaviors. In this video, Andrea Grodnitzky, Senior Vice President, of Richardson’s Global Performance Solutions, offers advice about the importance of developing custom sales training and how to leverage it to help  sales reps learn, practice, and apply changing behaviors within an organization. Custom Sales Training Every company has a unique finger print and At Richardson, we believe that custom sales training solutions drive behavioral change. Through customization we are able to capture and share your knowledge and best practices across your sales team and reinforce your strategy.  We leverage our proprietary customization process to ensure our solutions support your objectives and have maximum impact on improving performance.  Our customizing process minimizes the time needed from your professionals and allows for a consistent methodology to be deployed across audiences while the application is completely relevant to their specific situations and challenging to the learner. To learn more about Richardson’s custom sales training solutions, please click here     The post Video Blog: Custom Sales Training: Why is it Important? appeared first on The Richardson Sales Excellence Review™.

How do you support the transition of a high performing sales rep to a sales manager? In this video blog, Richardson’s Andrea Grodnitzky, Senior Vice President, Global Performance Solutions, explains the first steps to transitioning from sales rep to sales manager: letting go. Andrea also discusses the responsibilities that new sales managers must create time for, including reporting, coaching, and planning. Learn more about Richardson’s Sales Coaching Training Solutions Richardson’s Developmental Sales Coaching programs quickly deliver the processes and skills sales managers need to coach their salespeople to a higher level of sales excellence. To learn more, click here.  The post How Do You Support the Transition of a High Performing Sales Rep to a Sales Manager? appeared first on The Richardson Sales Excellence Review™.

Lead Nurturing and Marketing Automation: Make Messaging More Personal? Behind the scenes, marketing is tracking campaigns and sending leads to sales reps, but sales could lose good opportunities if they don’t make a personal connection. In this video, Jim Brodo, Senior Vice President, Marketing, builds on his earlier blog post, Some Do’s and Don’ts for Better Lead Nurturing and Follow Up, to  further discuss the impact of marketing automation on the ability of reps to effectively nurture leads with a more personalized message. Please join him for this short video blog post. If you are having trouble viewing this video blog, please click the following - Lead Nurturing and Marketing Automation: Make Messaging More Personal ———————————- Jump Start your Next Sales Meeting with Richardson’s Selling with Insights™ Workshop Richardson’s Selling with Insights™ Workshop is a three-hour interactive workshop that will enable your sellers to bring insights to customers to change the conversation! The Richardson’s Selling with Insights™ Workshop is designed for groups of 40-50 participants making it a great fit for your next sales meetings. Contact us today to request more information at jim.brodo@richardson.com   The post Lead Nurturing and Marketing Automation: Make Messaging More Personal appeared first on The Richardson Sales Excellence Review™.

Does it make sense for HR or Learning and Development to own Sales Training?  Professionals in Human Resources (HR) and Learning and Development have tremendous expertise and can be extremely valuable to organizations. However, we believe that neither HR nor Learning and Development should own sales training. That may have made sense in the past, but it no longer fits today’s business environment. Rather, these functions should be positioned as a trusted business partner to either the line or the sales organization. One reason for the change from owner to partner is that the world of sales and marketing is changing at breakneck pace, which is being driven by advancements in technology and evolving customer-buying behavior. Think of the way you buy products and services as a consumer as compared to 10 or 15 years ago. The "consumerization" that has plagued bricks-and-mortar stores has leaked into the business-to-business world. Can HR or Learning and Development keep up with this level and degree of change occurring in sales and marketing in addition to keeping up with all of the change that is happening in their own world? It’s a lot to ask. Their role would be better served as a trusted partner to the business to ensure that good learning principles and practices get applied to helping the sales force develop the skills necessary to operate in this new environment that we are being pushed into - but not necessarily as the owner. Don’t take away the efficiencies gained through a central Learning and Development group. There has to be scalability between the overall Learning and Development initiatives, modalities, and approaches that are used within an organization. Every learner within the organization can and should benefit from those practices. It comes down to forging a collaborative partnership between HR and the business units, but allowing the subject-matter experts to drive the training. HR and Learning and Development reps are not subject-matter experts in sales, although they are not subject-matter experts in accounting either. But it is a real wake up call for many HR professionals to say, "You are going to have to become a bit of an expert and live in the world of your learning audience in order to really be collaborative." The takeaway is that HR should no longer own the process. However, HR should take ownership of working with the VP of Sales and with all of the sales management. Travel to the field, get to learn what sales trainers are putting out there, and then start to think about what things you can help them with, how you can collaborate on new and different ways of practical, relevant training approaches. As learners, sales teams need to know that there are new learning models and approaches, in which HR should be an expert. Do you agree that HR should no longer "own" sales training? Let us know in the comments below? Selling with Insights Learn more about how Richardson’s Selling with Insights™ can help teach your sales reps advanced preparation techniques and dialogue skills to effectively present insights, create needs and shape the customer’s thinking to add more value and differentiate your solution. Learn more The post Does it make sense for HR or Learning and Development to own Sales Training? appeared first on The Richardson Sales Excellence Review™.

Objection Resolution Model: Why is it Important? For many salespeople, objections are the toughest obstacle they face in making a sale. Today, it is crucial for sales reps to be able to handle and recover from objections because they are unavoidable. Join us for this video blog post as Andrea Grodnitzky, Senior Vice President, Global Performance Solutions, discusses the purpose of Richardson’s Objection Resolution Model and its ability to establish credibility for a sales rep who can consultatively deal with resistance from a prospect or client. {If you are having any troubles viewing this video blog, please click here} Want some further tips on the Objection Resolution model? Watch our video, Sales Training: Resolving Sales Objections.  This interactive video, walks you through our four step Objection Resolution Model of acknowledgement, question, position, and check. At Richardson, we help your salespeople overcome objections. We provide interactive sales training - in the class and on the Web - that provides the process and skills to help your sales team to confidently and effectively respond to client’s objections and win more business. To learn more about Richardson’s Consultative Selling Skills Programs please click here. The post Objection Resolution Model: Why is it Important? appeared first on The Richardson Sales Excellence Review™.