Action Selling Customers Adopt Best Practices in Sales Training About this research brief As part of its annual research study of the sales training marketplace, Aberdeen surveyed 835 end-user organizations in June and July 2010, to learn about their use of sales training and related selling performance. These results are included in the findings of the benchmark study, Sales Training: Deploying Knowledge, Process and Technology to Consistently Hit Quota (September 2010). Overall Impact of Sales Training Among the many performance metrics that can be used to gauge sales success, the five shown in Figure I speak to a substantive variety of measurements around sales effectiveness, from year-over-year growth in quota attainment, customer retention and average selling prices, to reducing sales staff turnover and time-to-sell windows. Figure 1: Action Selling Customers See Enhanced Year-over-Year Results A greater percentage of Action Selling customers showed annualized advances in all these areas, when compared to all other firms. 1
Executive Level Support for Sales Training In the early stages of deploying a successful sales training engagement, many survey respondents report embracing the organizational capability defined as top-level executives within our company are active sponsors of our sales training initiatives. Action Selling customers lead other companies, 74% to 69%, in gaining C-level support for sales training. Figure 2: Bottom-Line Benefits of C-Level Support of Sales Training Keeping Training Fresh When it comes to post-training reinforcement of the best practices commonly learned in classroomstyle, instructor-led sales education sessions, 58% of Action Selling customers deploy this knowledge management capability, compared to 46% of other organizations. These firms have learned that longterm success depends on the best practices of reinforcement. Figure 3 illustrates a dramatic contrast in year-over-year sales metric performance between companies that formally support post-training reinforcement, and those that do not. Figure 3: Post-training Reinforcement Helps Yield Annual Growth 2
Assessing Long-Term Success A key way in which top-performing sales teams hold learners accountable involves the practice of deploying formal assessments, both pre and post-training. It s critical to have a validated process to assess sales reps against competency requirements to determine specific skill gaps and the type of training most appropriate for each seller. Action Selling customers are strong supporters of this approach, with a 61% adoption rate, compared with 46% of other firms. Figure 4: The Value of Assessing Sales Rep Skills Case Study: Veolia Environmental Services, a user of Action Selling Consider the case of Veolia Environmental Services, the world s largest environmental services provider, with a sales force of 125 professionals selling to a variety of business verticals and company sizes. According to Mark Dennis, Vice President of Sales and Marketing, prior to sales training there was no unified selling process, and we were particularly vulnerable because most of our reps sold on price, not value, but we weren t the low-cost provider in the market. He explains that, We had to figure out a way to move the message from price to value, particularly because in such a diverse business environment, acquiring new revenue was complicated by the need to replace bookings lost to competitors or customers that went out of business. Working in lock-step with Action Selling, Dennis used a combination of instructor-led, phone-based and reinforcement techniques to improve the capabilities of his selling team. Of particular importance was the train the trainer component: while newer and younger hires could be taught in a relatively straightforward manner, Dennis says that anyone who is more experienced, and has been selling a long time, tends to have a lot of good and bad habits that are hard to break. Because he and his mid-level sales manages were certified by Action Selling, our veterans are more inclined to consider new techniques because they know their management has walked the walk, and proven themselves successful with the Veolia selling hierarchy. As a result, Dennis explains, We look for just a few ah-ha moments in the field that create positive results for these experienced reps, and they more quickly come on board with the updated training content. For variably-compensated training professionals, he says, the best teacher is success. 3
Reinforcement of sales training techniques is also vital to Veolia. The company created in-field coaching guides for ride-along selling for managers to grade reps according to the content and best practices deployed by Action Selling, and Dennis says these coaching sheets are used in the formal review and evaluation process for the team. These same practices are directly linked to the sales stage definitions used in the company s CRM system, so it is easy to identify which components of the training process are or aren t being properly executed in the field. In terms of bottom-line productivity, he confirms that, Revenue is typically growing faster for the reps who have participated in Action Selling, because if you have the right activity and right selling skills, you re bound to succeed. Conclusion Sales training continues to represent an investment that companies continue to retain as a must have rather than a nice to have, as the benefits of an educated, focused sales team, even during a questionably healthy economic cycle, are continuously borne out by Aberdeen s research. Figure 5: Current Performance of Action Selling Customers While budget cuts have helped enterprises reduce their expenses, only the sales organization can refresh the gap between the bottom and top lines. Providing them with the processes, technologies and services to do so effectively remains the wisest strategy of all, and the particular best practices we ve analyzed here executive sponsorship, CRM call planning, integration, post-training reinforcement and skills assessments serve as wise first steps for any professional selling team to consider. In the case of Action Selling customers, whose performance is also highlighted in Figure 5, they are investing in best sales practices and realizing better performance results. For more information on this and other research topics, please visit www.aberdeen.com. 4
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