how to select the right sales training program

Selling Power Interview with Dave Stein discussing approaches to sales training. His company, ES Research, helps sales management and corporate training organizations evaluate, select and implement sales training and productivity improvement programs.

Some interesting notes from the interview:

US companies spend $4B per year on sales training
only 20% of companies measure the effectiveness of the their sales training
there are many different types of sales training programs and methodologies, but sales training programs are typically selected based on subjective criteria such as charisma of the training company CEO, the look of the web site, level of advertising.

Dave suggests the right approach to selecting a sales training company involves:

perform an objective assessment of your current situation and sales challenges
create specific training requirements and goals
request proposals from vendors based on the requirements

I agree with Dave’s advice. Not all sales training programs are equal and not all trainers are the same. The sales training market is highly fragmented. There are a few large recognized names, which are usually tied to a specific methodology which may or may not be suitable for your company’s selling environment and goals. Beyond that there are many local trainers/consultants who have either developed their own training program based on experience or add their own flavor to the name brand training which make evaluation even more complicated.

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Eliot Burdett

CEO at Peak Sales Recruiting

Before Peak, Eliot spent more than 20 years building and leading companies, where he took the lead in recruiting and managing high performance sales teams. He co-founded Ventrada Systems (mobile applications) and GlobalX (e-commerce software). He was also Vice President of Sales for PointShot Wireless.

Eliot received his B. Comm. from Carleton University and has been honored as a Top 40 Under 40 Award winner.

He co-authored Sales Recruiting 2.0, How to Find Top Performing Sales People, Fast and provides regular insights on sales team management and hiring on the Peak Sales Recruiting Blog.