9 out of 10 sales training initiatives have no lasting impact after 120 days.1 Considering companies spend $3.4 to $4.6 billion on sales training with outsourced providers each year, that’s a big investment with little to show for it beyond short-term, short-lived gains.2 Fortunately, the reasons sales training fails are both predictable and fixable. By avoiding common mistakes, you set yourself up for successful training initiatives that lead to increased sales performance and long-term revenue growth. Here are the most common problems we see: Before training, companies don’t have clearly defined outcomes and they don’t align the outcomes with learning needs   Training focuses on building sales skills but doesn’t build fluent sales knowledge   Sellers attributes (their drivers and detractors of sales success) are ignored   There’s no process or methodology or goal and action planning, so sellers don’t know what to do to get the best results...      

I recently returned from an industry conference. The speakers were excellent and it was great to get away from my desk, connect with the attendees, and have the opportunity to step back and think big picture about what I need to be doing to drive success in my position. I returned with all sorts of notes, to-dos, and grand visions for change. On my first day back in the office I was energized. Then the phone started to ring, the emails came flooding in, and my schedule filled with meetings. Two weeks later, while I had made some progress on my aspirational list of to-dos, by and large I was back to doing what I had always done. The problem for me was that there was no support to make the change when I got back to the office. The same thing happens after even the best sales training programs, especially if the training is structured as an instructor-led, event-based, one-time only affair...      

Bringing in new customers is expensive. According to research by Fred Reichheld of Bain & Company, it costs 6 to 7x more to acquire a new customer than it does to retain an existing customer. In our own work, we regularly find companies have significant untapped opportunity for growing accounts. Yet cross-selling, up-selling, and growing accounts is a major challenge companies face. In our research, The Benchmark Report on High Performance in Strategic Account Management, we looked at what high performers in strategic account management do differently than the rest to grow accounts. These 5 keys show the starkest difference and have the greatest impact on cross-selling success...      

According to research from Aberdeen Group, best-in-class companies—those that outperform others on a variety of sales factors, including quota attainment, shrinking the sales cycle, and growing the average deal size: Provide structured sales training with a formal methodology (58% of best-in-class companies compared to 37% of laggards)1   Outpace laggards by nearly two-times in providing post-training reinforcement.2   Are much more likely to provide licensable content from an external provider (59% compared to 38% of laggards)   Provide third-party customized coaching (40% compared to 28% of laggards) Up until now, these capabilities were really only accessible to big companies with millions of dollars to build programs, set up sophisticated technologies, and have the staff and resources to implement and improve...      

You finally got the meeting! Now what? While getting a buyer to say "yes" to an initial sales meeting is a battle in and of itself, much success is determined by what happens in that first meeting. There are many mistakes to avoid, especially when you’re the one setting the meeting and driving the demand for your offerings. At the very core, meetings set by you—the seller—flow differently than if the buyer contacted you and asked you to meet. After all, if you set the meeting, odds are the product, service, or solution you’re trying to sell isn’t on the buyer’s radar screen. You’re trying to persuade a buyer to put something on their agenda that they hadn’t otherwise been considering. You need connect. You need to inspire. And you need to drive action...      

"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means." - Inigo Montoya People at large companies bandy about the terms "key account management" and "strategic account management" in conversation every day. Ask 10 people to define what these are, or to tell you what the criteria are for an account to be named a "key" account, and you’re likely to get 10 very different answers. When companies lack an effective and universally understood definition of key account management, their success is hampered from the start. If you can’t define something, it’s difficult to develop a strategy around it...      

We've all been there. Someone reaches out to you. They're enthusiastic. Ask for information. Want to talk to you on the phone. Ask for a proposal. Tell you they're "genuinely interested" in what you're offering. And "need something concrete to discuss in a meeting that's coming up." And then...nothing. The sale doesn't move forward. No decision is made. No further action from your side required. And "they'll be back in touch when they know more." Here's the thing: sometimes the people we start talking to are not the people we should be talking to. Sellers I speak with often talk about the need to develop their networking skills to "go around someone and get to the real decision maker."      

When people talk about differentiation, the word they most associate with it is 'unique.' Now, the word 'unique' is fraught with problems and danger. The first reason is because what people say is unique often isn't actually unique. In fact, it comes across as pretty common. For example, one company might say, "What makes us unique is our depth of experience. We only have people with 20 years of experience working on our projects." Or another company might say, "Well, our technology is customized specifically for your industry." Even another company might say, "Our level of customer service is truly the best in the industry." Oftentimes, these things are valuable, but the definition of the word 'unique' is being without equal...      

In The Benchmark Report on High Performance in Strategic Account Management, we analyzed data from over 370 companies that engage in formal strategic account management. We asked about the top challenges that limit account growth and found the number one difference between high performers and the rest is: having an effective strategic account planning tool. Only 19% of high performers reported having an effective account planning tool as challenging compared to 53% of everyone else (see graph to the left). The challenge of having an effective tool does not, however, exist in a vacuum. Companies that don’t have an effective tool often don’t have one because they’re not committed to account growth as a systematic process, and they don’t commit to account planning as a necessary component of account growth success. In any case, if you don’t have an effective tool you use across all accounts, it’s virtually impossible to make real progress in growing accounts systematically.        

The sales landscape has shifted in the last few years. Buyers are more informed than ever, competition is stiffer, and products and services are increasingly seen as replaceable, leaving most sellers at a loss for the best way to add value and differentiate. Yet, some sellers continue to win consistently. To find out what these sellers are doing differently than the rest, we undertook a massive research effort. In our study, we looked at 700 B2B purchases made by buyers who represent $3.1 billion in annual purchasing power. We found that the sellers who win harness the power of ideas. And in our new book, Insight Selling: Surprising Research on What Sales Winners Do Differently by bestselling authors Mike Schultz and John Doerr, we share exactly how they do it...