Selling Power Blog

What Is Your Growth IQ?

Below is an interview with Selling Power magazine publisher Gerhard Gschwandtner and Tiffani Bova, Salesforce growth and innovation evangelist and author of the Wall Street Journal bestseller Growth IQ: Get Smarter About the Choices that Will Make or Break Your Business.

 

Gerhard Gschwandtner (GG): What is growth IQ?

Tiffani Bova (TB): Achieving growth has become far too complex and high-pressure for businesses to rely on smart ideas alone. Repeatable, reliable growth depends on “growth IQ” – your capacity for making the right series of choices at the right time. I like to approach growth as a thinking game. How can we expand our approach to include what is possible – not just what we are successful doing today?

GG: Why is it important for sales professionals to have a growth IQ mindset?

TB: There is no greater disrupter to the profession of sales than the customers themselves. They have shown – through their buying habits, usage of technology, and willingness to choose brands based on value and experience over “products sold” – that, if we don’t rethink the way in which we sell, we won’t win their business. Sales organizations have a difficult transition to make because they are being challenged on multiple fronts. Having a mindset that is open and willing to adapt to new technology capabilities, new processes, and increasing cross-team collaboration is what is necessary to succeed.

GG: Why is there so often a misperception about the role sales plays in a company’s ability to grow?

TB: Companies do two things: they make stuff and they sell stuff. While that is somewhat of an obvious oversimplification, it captures the often-underappreciated role sales plays in a company’s growth. However, it has become far more complicated to define what is considered under the domain of “sales” today. With more and more sales happening online without human touch, more channels with which companies can market and sell, and some companies showing rapid growth with no formal sales force at all, it is important to remember that selling – regardless of how that happens – is the fuel that powers any business. What is important now is to make sure that companies realize it is no longer about how we want to sell that is important – what is important is how our customers want to buy.

GG: What does it mean to focus on sales optimization as a growth strategy?

TB: Historically, when pipeline and deal close rates start to slow companies pull a number of familiar levers. They might spend more marketing dollars, cut costs (including salespeople), or hire more salespeople in an attempt to reverse course. What they forget is only slightly more than half of sales representatives (53 percent) are meeting or exceeding their quotas according to CSO Insights World-Class Sales Practices Study (2018).

While this is concerning in its own right, even more concerning is that this is the fifth straight year of decline. If that isn’t enough to get leadership’s attention, this might: According to the State of Sales study by Salesforce, nearly two-thirds (64.8 percent) of reps’ time, on average, is spent in non-revenue-generating activities, leaving only 35.2 percent for functions related to selling. How can that be possible considering all the time, money, and effort companies have put into training, implementing technology, and enabling sales teams to be more effective? Well, much of the changes required to achieve productivity gains should be focused beyond technology.

Yes, it is true technology such as CRM is extremely important – it enables performance improvements, but it’s not the only requirement. Optimizing sales is also about rethinking the people and process side of selling, which, in some cases, requires even more significant change than deploying a new sales tool. Doing an inventory of what sales processes are in place today and determining if they are still applicable is a great place to start. Then, and only then, can you begin to optimize your current state to help propel you to your future state.   

GG: What can sales professionals do today to start adopting a growth IQ mindset?

TB: The best piece of advice I can provide is to reevaluate as much as you can about current sales processes – especially in the habits which have been built up over time. As the old saying goes, “What got you here won’t get you there.” Without the willingness to take advantage of all that technology enables us to do in serving our customers better, sellers stuck in the past will be left behind by others who are willing to adjust. A salesperson’s future competition isn’t just other companies; it is other sellers who are using AI, analytics, and predictive insights to re-imagine the value equation they deliver to customers.  

How to Bridge the Gap to Reach Modern Buyers

Today’s post is by Jake Braly, vice president of marketing at Highspot, the industry’s leading sales enablement solution. Find him on LinkedIn and Twitter at @jakebraly.

 

Picture this: You’re a seller standing on the edge of the Grand Canyon. Across the great divide, you see your buyers attempting to build a bridge to reach the other side. They know where they want to go, and the question is, how can you help them get there?

In the modern world, connecting with modern buyers in a way that provides meaningful value is more difficult, and more important, than ever before. With digital resources at their fingertips, today’s buyers are informed, savvy, and demanding. They’ve done their homework and expect sellers to add value beyond what they have already learned.

According to CEB, 53 percent of customer loyalty is driven by sales reps offering unique value and perspectives. Are you one of these reps – or one of those whose outreach efforts echo unanswered?

While there are many reasons salespeople fail to reach potential customers, one reason surfaces consistently: The sellers are not equipped with the tools they need to succeed. Just as it’s impossible to build a bridge without the correct materials, sellers cannot be expected to reach buyers when they do not have the necessary solutions.

So, what is it that will help prepare sellers to win over modern buyers? Sales enablement.

With Corporate Visions reporting that 74 percent of buyers choose the sales rep who was first to add value and insight, sellers need a way to make an impression. Sales enablement is the strategic, ongoing process of equipping sales teams with the content, guidance, and training they need to effectively engage buyers. From content recommendations to analytics, a sales enablement solution has what sales and marketing teams need to align, meet their goals, and drive revenue.

Let’s take a closer look at three things sales enablement does to close the gap between sellers and modern buyers:

1. Prepare sellers for every conversation: Chances are buyers have researched your product or service before you even make contact. Some may be ready to bring out the credit card; others may be skeptical and in need of real-world examples to be convinced. Sales enablement empowers sellers to meet buyers with the right materials at every stage of the journey. Reps can quickly become experts with access to dynamic sales guides and readiness materials – making it so they can confidently enter any conversation.
   
   
2. Engage buyers with effective content (at the right time): Have you ever bounced back and forth between multiple drives, folders, and platforms in search of the perfect piece of content to close – only to end up empty-handed? A sales enablement platform provides a singular place to organize, share, and analyze all sales assets, making it easy for reps to find what they need, when they need it. It doesn’t stop there: Advanced platforms have AI-driven content recommendation features that use machine learning to surface the most relevant asset for every situation.
   
   
3. Analyze and optimize best practices: You’ve pitched case studies, product brochures, data sheets, proposals, and more. Do you know which type of content resonates most with each customer? With sales enablement, you can use end-to-end analytics to measure customer engagement, including email activity, email opens, dwell times, demo time, and more – and then roll the data together to amplify best practices across the team.

When sellers give prospects the guidance and support they need to get to their destination, it’s a journey modern buyers won’t forget. Sales enablement is the way to build bridges that last.

Eight Powerful Motivators That Will Inspire Your Salespeople

Today’s post is by Jane Sarles Larson, who has more than 25 years of managerial experience in incentives, recognition, and consumer marketing. As the market resource manager at ITA Group (www.itagroup.com), she understands what the employee and channel partner market values through industry research and development.

 

While money and non-monetary incentives are undoubtedly important to sales professionals, there is another layer of motivation. Offering your salespeople intrinsic motivators alongside extrinsic ones will spur your team on to greater sales and satisfaction.

Intrinsic motivation is behavior driven by positive internal feelings. And it can be just as powerful as external motivation. We’re all unique, with different things that motivate and excite us. The key is to identify the internal and external motivators that align and motivate your people.

Take a closer look at these eight intrinsic motivators to determine which ones resonate with your team – and consider how you can deploy them to maximize your sales results.

1. Autonomy

No one likes to have a boss breathing down their neck or micromanaging. Professionals value a sense of autonomy. Try letting one of your salespeople manage the monthly team meeting as a reward for hard work. Or, give your people an opportunity to focus on the lead or target they feel is most beneficial. When you take a disciplined autonomy approach, you offer your team a valuable chance to flourish on its own.

2. Mastery

Everyone has an inherent urge for mastery, and wants to get better at what they do. Olympic swimmers don’t always want to get up at 4 a.m. to practice their strokes, but they do it anyway because they want to excel. Research shows that the best way to achieve mastery is through an incredible amount of consistent, focused practice. Give your salespeople ample time and opportunities to hone their skills and master the art of selling.

3. Purpose

Meaningful work can give a person a sense of “purpose, value, and impact – of being involved in something bigger than themselves,” according to motivation expert and New York Times best-selling author Dan Ariely. Look for opportunities for your sales team to work on community service projects to foster a sense of shared purpose. They can also find purpose in helping other team members meet organization-wide goals.

4. Drive

Think about the sales leader coming in on a Saturday to knock out emails and plot out objectives for next week. This is a manifestation of drive – the innate motivation people have to achieve. Ariely shares a similar view when talking about idea attachment. What brings salespeople into the office early in the morning or makes them stay long after co-workers have left is the drive to see their ideas come to fruition and excel.

5. Belonging

Belonging – feeling like part of a team – is a powerful intrinsic motivator. We want to feel like we’re pushing together in the same direction. According to Dan Ariely, “The more a company can offer its employees opportunities for meaning and connection, the harder those employees are likely to work and the more enduring their loyalty is likely to be.”

6. Status

Think of things that are extrinsic status symbols: cars, houses, trophies. We gather and flaunt them as a celebration of our own success. It’s built into our DNA. On your sales team, status is the way team members see each other. This is a powerful motivator that underlies many of the decisions and actions of salespeople.

7. Learning

World-class achievers are committed to continual improvement and self-motivation. They understand that, to succeed in an ever-changing world, they must always be learning and evolving. Many salespeople are also intrinsically motivated by learning – whether by attending seminars and conferences or taking an online course. They will appreciate and benefit from having opportunities to hone their skills.

8. Social Contact

Generally, salespeople love people, and enjoy opportunities to be around others. Social contact is a powerful motivator. When you arrange get-togethers for your salespeople, you give them a chance to connect on a personal level. That creates an environment that motivates and inspires – ultimately leading to greater success for the entire team.

Placing the Right Salesperson in the Wrong Sales Role

Today’s post is by Tracey Wik, president and managing director of GrowthPlay’s talent and organization effectiveness practice.

 

 

One of the biggest mistakes I see in sales talent management is placing a good sales hire into a position that doesn’t fit the person’s skills or talents.

Nothing will squelch the fires of motivation more thoroughly than a poor job fit. Sellers become frustrated when they can’t successfully do the job they want to do. Research conducted by the Chally Group Worldwide (now part of GrowthPlay) demonstrates that as much as 65 percent of job dissatisfaction is a result of these job mismatches.

In addition, placing the right person in the wrong role will set up your company for a high price of unwanted turnover. In small amounts, turnover keeps the organization fresh with new talent and ideas. However, when turnover is higher or unwanted, the result quickly turns negative – costing the organization considerable time and money to hire and train new salespeople.

Why the Right Person Ends up in the Wrong Sales Role

There are two reasons the right person can end up in the wrong sales role. The first point of possible failure is the recruitment and selection process. The second is when organizations restructure and reassign existing sellers to new roles. Failure in either situation is caused by the same root problem – confusion of strengths and skillsets.

Different sales roles require different styles, skills, and strengths. There’s no more prevalent example than the core competencies needed to be a “hunter” versus a “farmer.” The hunter (what we refer to as a new business developer) is characterized by those who are motivated by new clients, opportunities, and challenges. These are the salespeople who move from deal to deal and always keep their eye on the next win. Successful new business developers are wired to always be networking. They are good at problem solving and they are comfortable taking risks.

Often contrasted with the hunter is the farmer (also known as the account manager). The account manager builds long-term loyalty and repeat business with clients. Successful account managers are able to be advocates for their customers. They are patient and persistent, good at managing their time, and possess strong interpersonal and teaming skills.

Let’s suppose you run a sales organization. Your top producers in new business development (NBD) generate $2 million each and your top producers in account management (AM) generate $3 million each. After looking at these numbers, your CEO decides to reassign the 20 top NBD producers to the AM group, hoping to increase overall revenue by 50 percent – from $40 million to $60 million.

However, according to our research, only two of the newly assigned sales professionals would become top producers in the AM group (generating $3 million each) while an additional six would become merely dependable producers generating around $1 million each. The other 12 would likely fail to make even $1 million, so let’s estimate them at half a million each. In this scenario, reassigning the top producers from an NBD role to an AM role in an attempt to increase sales from $40 million to $60 million could end up reducing sales from $40 million to $18 million.

What to Do When the Right Person Is in the Wrong Sales Role: Three Choices

If you recognize that you currently have the right person (or people) in the wrong sales role, you have three choices. 

1. Re-assign the person to a role that is a better match.

With this decision, you can leverage the seller’s talent by reassigning them to a role that complements the person’s strengths and skillset. The challenge here is that you’ll then have an empty position and need to find someone else with the right skillset for the old role.

2. Start over by actively seeking new talent and replacing the person in the position.

The downside to this choice is the time, energy, and money spent on rehiring for the position. If your company can afford the loss of these three limited resources, then this may be a good option.

3. Use assessment data and predictive talent analytics to restructure your whole sales force.

Wondering if you have multiple sellers in the wrong roles? A talent audit can provide you a viewpoint of the competencies of your entire sales team – along with predictions of each person’s capacity for different sales roles.

Never Put the Right Person in the Wrong Role Again

To ensure you put the right people in the right roles in the future, the best strategy is to look at your data and develop ideal profiles for each sales position. Assessment and performance data can help you determine the competencies you need for each of your sales roles. Actively use the right role profile each time you seek to fill a sales position. A structured interview process coupled with assessment data ensures the best chance at putting the right person in the right role.

High-performing Salespeople: Separating Madness, Myth, and Methodology

Today’s post is by Michelle Vazzana, CEO and a founding partner at Vantage Point Performance, a leading global sales management training and development firm. She is co-author of Cracking the Sales Management Code: The Secrets to Measuring and Managing Sales Performance. Her newest book is Crushing Quota: Proven Sales Coaching Tactics for Breakthrough Performance.

 

Every year, the Florida State University (FSU) Sales Institute conducts a benchmarking survey to identify top priorities for their consortium of sales leaders. In 2018, replicating the performance of high performers was the number one focus area. Why? Because, in a world where quota requirements are on the rise, the percentage of salespeople meeting them is at an all-time low.

Furthermore, a recent study of more than 1,000 sales calls examined by the FSU Sales Institute found that, on average, only six minutes of a 60-minute sales call were devoted to information unique to the seller and correspondingly important to the customer. The combination of missed goals and misaligned seller interactions is the equivalent of the sky falling on Chicken Little. Yet sales organizations are pretending it isn’t happening. What’s going on?

Negative Trends in Sales Effectiveness

Worrisome trends are afoot in the world of sales effectiveness – trends that, if left unchecked, will continue to tank sales improvement efforts and stymie well-intentioned salespeople. The result will be billions of dollars wasted and crashing sales force productivity.

The most problematic trend is that we keep investing in sales improvement efforts that don’t work. One of the top choices for improving sales performance is to invest in a standardized sales methodology; yet over 65 percent of organizations report that the results they achieve when deploying these methodologies are below expectations. So, are sales training efforts aimed at standardizing around a given methodology worthwhile? Or are they simply a big waste of money?

The Need for Better Sales Effectiveness Strategies

One very practical way to answer this question is to examine how others have solved similar problems. Let’s use the military as our point of reference. For thousands of years, military leaders all used a single battle strategy. Military leaders lined up as many soldiers as possible and engaged the enemy before them in hand-to-hand combat.

Modern warfare is quite different. Instead of amassing soldiers and engaging in hand-to-hand combat, military leaders strike their enemies with precision tactics – tactics appropriate for the specific situation they encounter. Military leaders today use very powerful intelligence gathering techniques to assess the battlefield before they ever engage – limiting the waste of resources and increasing their chances of success.

The Importance of Data for Sales Effectiveness

Technological advancements lead to increased availability of data, which leads to better military insight, which allows the neutralization of key targets and crippling of the enemy. Leaders must know target locations, which they obtain via satellite images and drones – not guesswork or instinct. The constant stream of data allows continual adjustment in strategies and tactics, thereby creating a vastly more agile force. Agility is impossible without insight, which is impossible without data.

How does this relate to sales improvement and investments in sales methodology?

Standardization Is the Enemy of Agility

Understandably, organizations want to standardize to one sales approach; however, this is “efficiency thinking” at the expense of effectiveness. Why? Because our research with FSU revealed that any given sales approach is effective only 25 percent of the time. In fact, the highest performing salespeople struggle to adhere to a single sales methodology. High performers know that a single approach can never work in every situation.

Successful sellers, like successful military leaders, are agile. They adapt their approach to the situation they face. The scary fact is that average sellers – the core group of any sales force – have the highest adoption rates of sales methodologies that work only about 25 percent of the time. Sadly, organizations are investing millions of dollars to train their salespeople to be average. How is your organization impacted when you consider your own sales improvement efforts?

Sales Agility: The Way of the Future

In sales, as in the military, insight is needed for success. You need insight into the situations your salespeople face – and the best sales approach to use in those different scenarios. First, analyze the factors that define your organization’s unique sales situations. Sales situations are company-specific, exactly the opposite of a one-size-fits-all approach. When it comes to identifying your seller’s unique buying situations, the hard truth is that it’s unlikely that a single approach will do the trick and make the sale.  

Next, you must use data to identify which selling strategies win in your different buying situations. This is the only reliable path to take if you want to replicate the practices of your top performers who do this instinctively. You must analyze the situations they face and identify the sales strategies they use to win in those situations. This is the best path to insight that leads to true sales agility and success. Military leaders know it and – thanks to FSU’s research – now, so do we.

How to Not Waste Your Trade Show Dollars in 2019

Today’s post is by Alice Heiman, who has been helping companies increase sales for more than 20 years. Her innovative sales leadership programs – coupled with her top-down approach to creating long-term change – set up sales leaders and sales-managing business owners to get consistent and sustainable growth. She has recently launched TradeShow Makeover™ to improve the results companies get from exhibiting at events.

 

Many sales leaders have strategic plans for 2019 that include attending and exhibiting at trade shows to generate leads. But one of my clients told me he spent more than $200,000 annually on one trade show and got disappointing results. The show was huge, and thousands of people walked through the exhibit area. His salespeople swiped a lot of badges; but, unfortunately, the booth visitors were not the decision makers they had been hoping to meet. They did some follow-up but got very little response. He felt sick about it. He’d wasted all that time and money.

Trade Shows: Doomed to Disappointing Results?

Are trade shows a waste? They don’t have to be – not by a long shot. Recently, Spingo reported 77 percent of executive decision makers found at least one new supplier at the last trade show they attended.

Yet, I would say that more than half the contacts made at trade shows are either unqualified leads or are wasted because the salespeople don’t follow up – and marketing doesn’t have a plan to stay in front of prospects. In fact, if you’re leaving money on the trade-show floor, you probably have at least one of these problems.

1. The right people have not been attracted to your booth.
2. Your message wasn’t clear.
3. Your follow-up is insufficient.
4. Your team finds it hard to track leads from trade shows.

The Three Phases to Increase Results from Your Trade-show Experience

You never have to be disappointed again. Here’s my proven three-step process to improve the results of any trade show – whether you are exhibiting or just walking the floor. If you want more insight, register for the TradeShow Makeover Virtual Summit.

A successful trade-show plan has three phases.

Phase #1: CREATE

First, you need to plan a winning strategy. Planning starts when you pay your fees to secure your booth. At least eight weeks before the show you will meet with your team and plan all your marketing and sales efforts.

Here are some of the most important actions to take before the show:

• Think about the results you need – and set goals.
• Plan to stand out! Think through your booth’s appearance and how it will attract prospects. As prospects walk down the aisle toward your booth, what will they see? Is your message clear and compelling? Are the colors attractive? As they approach, will they feel invited? Or will they feel intimidated by a large table taking up the conversation space?
• Figure out how your team will connect with prospects in advance. Some shows provide a list of attendees (although you may have to pay extra for it). Send messages to your clients and prospects asking if they plan to attend the show. Watch social media to see who among your clients and prospects is using the show’s hashtag.
• Make a plan to follow up after the show and prepare all the follow-up messaging.
• Train your team to be present when they are in the booth. That means they are looking up, smiling, and greeting guests – not looking at their phones or laptops. Let them know what they should wear. Also, ask them to stand in front of the booth rather than in the back or behind a table. Make sure they avoid dragging people in from the aisle – practically strangling them to scan their badge and then pitching to them (these are the things attendees dislike most when walking anywhere near a booth). Since your team can’t have their phones or laptops out in the booth, make a show schedule. That way everyone knows when they will have a break to check email and interact on social media.
• Make a social media plan and follow the hashtag even before the show starts. You can learn about who is attending by designating someone to watch and interact with the social posts around the show. This person should not be sitting in the booth – and, since the booth staff should not have their phones out, I recommend one person in the booth be assigned to step out of the booth and check text messages from the social media team to see if there is action needed. All of this needs to be decided in advance when you are creating your strategy.

Phase #2: DOMINATE

While you’re at the trade show, focus on these activities to dominate and maximize your results.

• If your team has set up meetings in advance of the show, some of the booth staff will need to leave the booth to attend pre-arranged meetings.
• Ask the right questions and listen to build relationships. In your planning you will have determined what questions to ask to get conversations started. Those questions might be about industry trends or company success and challenges. They are questions that will get the prospect talking.
• Don’t pitch. Yes, you are exhibiting so you can find new business...but selling in the booth doesn’t work well. Selling should take place when you have the prospect’s undivided attention. There’s no telling how many demos and pitches the prospect will see that day – and what are they truly likely to remember? Stand out by having memorable conversations and setting up meetings for after the show.
• Make connections and build relationships. When you impress someone by asking questions, listening, and then adding insight, they will want to talk to you again. Focus on building relationships so you can connect and continue the conversation after the show.
• Give booth visitors a high-quality, consistent experience that leads them to want more. That’s memorable. Remember: They will have seen tens or hundreds of booths during the show.
• Don’t neglect the other exhibitors – they may turn out to be your best leads!
• Use the event hashtag to interact with attendees posting on social media.

The work you do in the CREATE phase before the show should make it easy to DOMINATE at the trade show. Proper preparation will assure you meet the prospects and customers you planned to meet, attract ideal prospects to your booth, ask good questions, and have time to walk the show, attend sessions, and interact on social media.

Phase #3: GENERATE

• Be prepared to reconnect with your leads within 48 hours.
• Have a series of personal touches ready to send over the next three to six weeks.
• Be creative: Use video and hand-written cards to send personal messages.
• Connect on social media and learn information you can use to build the relationship.
• Don’t try to sell right away.
• Offer useful information and insights so they want to meet with you.
  

Everything you have done up till this point will not turn those leads into deals. It’s what you do when you get back to your office after the show that gets you results.

Discover more ideas to generate high-quality leads at trade shows and turn #LEADSintoDEALS. Register for the TradeShow Makeover™ free Three-day Virtual Summit.

The Popularity and Pitfalls of Online Sales Training

Today’s post is by Jeff Seeley, CEO of Carew International.

 

 

Recently, a Carew team member who is pursuing her master’s degree was expressing her frustration that the bulk of her classes for the semester were online courses. Her experience has been that the quality of online learning is lower than it is in a class with a live instructor. Her comments spawned a lively discussion among the Carew team about trends we have seen relative to online learning.

The Demand for Online Sales Training

Sometime around 2008, widespread demand for online sales training solutions hit the professional training industry. The attraction was easy to understand: Learning and meeting software had evolved such that they offered a sophisticated presentation of information, audio and video conferencing capabilities, nearly limitless thematic and format options, and an overall user experience that had improved dramatically. Add to this the benefits of eliminating travel and lodging expenses, as well as time out of the field, and it presented a very attractive alternative to in-class training events.

For those of us who conduct sales and leadership training, our knowledge of adult learning and retention – as well as our experience in the classroom – made it difficult to embrace this trend. Live, in-person training events facilitate cultural alignment, team building and problem solving, communication skill development, and role-play activities that immediately put concepts into practice. It is a unique dynamic and lasting bonding experience for the individuals gathered for the duration of the program. As renowned behavioral scientist and master trainer John Jones often said, people learn, comprehend, and gain greater alignment from a significant shared experience.

There is also the dimension of the in-person professional facilitators who not only lead the training process, but also motivate participants, develop relationships in the classroom, and generate discussions that enhance learning. Questions are asked and answered in real time, with the ability to expand or launch a broader discussion of interest to the entire class. It is impossible to capture online the dynamic of authentic coaching and personal connections that occur during an in-person training event.

The Shift to Online Learning as a Reinforcement Tool

Given the digital world we live in, I’m confident there is more learning taking place online than ever before. But we have seen a dramatic drop in the number of sales and business leaders who come to us thinking online training is comparable to in-class skill development or that it, alone, will deliver the dramatic sales improvements they desire. Today, leaders are viewing online resources more realistically and appropriately – as a post-training reinforcement tool.

This shift in client needs was the crux of the discussion among the Carew team: In an age when anything and everything is online, why has demand for online training solutions diminished?

In some cases, leaders have tried online training with disappointing results. In the case of one Carew client who asked to have our training programs broken down into a series of 45-minute segments for remote consumption, we utilized the latest technology to create virtual breakout rooms for role plays and to mimic many in-classroom experiences. Even leveraging technology to closely simulate an in-classroom experience, we found a dramatic degradation in retention, capability, teamwork, participant satisfaction, and performance improvement.

Another theory for the decline in requests for stand-alone online learning is that, like our Carew team member, more and more business leaders have had personal experience with online learning and recognize its limitations.

The Brookings Institute completed a significant study of online learning at the collegiate level and found, overall, a lower comprehension of material presented and higher likelihood of dropout. (See the executive summary and  complete study here). Given a choice between a job applicant with 50 percent of their college degree accomplished online versus someone with 100 percent classroom learning, who would you be more likely to hire?

Is Online Sales Training Effective?

Based on my experience with Carew customers, I will assert that, even as a reinforcement vehicle, self-guided online learning isn’t terribly effective. Carew offers an excellent online sales training reinforcement program. Still, I have found that company leaders often love the idea of online reinforcement, but don’t fully utilize it.

Online reinforcement capabilities are often a key consideration in the purchase decision – a resource purchased and never used. Or it is used initially, but engagement falls off very quickly. Too often, the mindset around use of an online learning tool is one of “checking the box,” with little or no follow-up to gauge retention or implementation. Essentially, the process becomes one of task enforcement instead of authentic skill-based reinforcement.

It was this gap that prompted Carew to reconsider the most effective means of training reinforcement. We know sales managers are critical to the success of any sales improvement effort, yet these individuals were being largely overlooked in the process. Why? It is likely because managers are overworked, tired, and don’t know how to initiate or facilitate sales training reinforcement.

We also know that the most effective reinforcement involves coaching and feedback “on the job” – and online reinforcement cannot provide for that. In fact, self-guided online reinforcement completely disconnects sales managers from the reinforcement process.

Establishing a Truly Effective Sales Training Strategy

In response, Carew developed a modular, prescriptive sales training reinforcement system for use by sales managers with their teams. It’s an approach that gets to the heart of effective sales training practices – incorporating new processes and practices into the sales team culture and business norms, while reinforcing at every level. Having a variety of reference materials and turnkey activities (including an online program) available to sales managers allows them to incorporate training reinforcement into their normal touch points, such as weekly sales meetings or quarterly reviews, without the burden of significant prep time.

This strategy also empowers sales managers to truly take ownership in leading the sales improvement initiative. That the activities are completed in a group dynamic goes a long way toward cementing the new processes, practices, and vocabulary into the culture of the sales team – and continuing the momentum and team building that occurred during the initial training event.

Business leaders who are considering a sales training initiative must understand that having the highest quality online sales training or reinforcement tools available does not automatically equate to skill improvement or adaptation. Leaders should give as much consideration to the post-training reinforcement as to the training itself – including the role of (and tools provided to) your sales managers in leading the performance improvement.