Your Media Technology Sales Team Does Not Need Training. They Need Sales Conditioning.
Why? Because one-off, event-style, "drive by" sales training doesn't work.
Eighty-five percent of everything learned in a training session is lost within 30 days. Methods and tactics learned must be reinforced, coached and practiced to become habit. Here's proof.
Research with chief sales executives in over 1,500 companies in 2007 found that, despite millions of dollars invested in salespeople, sales managers, sales training and sales technology, 50 percent of all deals forecast for closure in the current quarter were lost - with more than 20-percent lost to no decision.
What percentage of opportunities did you lose to no decision last quarter?
Among other things, this means sales managers and salespeople either have not learned or are not consistently using methods to properly qualify their prospects continually through the sales cycle. It also means that companies are wasting nearly 20 percent of their sales time and resources on deals that will never deliver a dime of revenue.
This finding is one of many that prove one-off sales training events fail to deliver lasting results. Salespeople and sales managers can't experience lasting change from a one-time, two- or three-day training course. They must be conditioned to consistently use methods and tactics that deliver predictable outcomes - accurate forecasting, increased revenues and won deals.
Think about it. No Olympic coach would field a high-jumper who had practiced once or twice in the last five years. No symphony conductor would seat a violinist who had taken only one lesson. Why do we continue to conduct annual or bi-annual training events and expect sales managers and salespeople to change years-long habits?
You need to condition your sales team with coaching, repetition, review and revision.
The same research with chief sales executives shows that companies that improved their sales effectiveness capabilities and implemented a program to continually reinforce the new methods were able to close more competitive opportunities and increase net new revenue.
See how Sales Performance Associates can deliver sales conditioning for your media technology sales team.
We offer real-life, in-the-trenches, bag-carrying, quota-busting broadcast and media technology sales and sales management expertise coupled with an array of training components that will boost your sales efforts beginning almost immediately. Sales conditioning theory becomes reality because we use your most challenging "live" deals in training.
Your sales managers learn to coach and develop your salespeople instead of serving as firefighting "super sales reps." We help identify the traits of your perfect customer and the job title-specific messages that will make them buy from you. All of this is wrapped into a formal yet flexible process that assures the right people take the right step at the right time. And, we deliver using a program that makes sure that sales training is practiced, reinforced, coached, adopted and turned into true sales conditioning.
So, if you are losing too many opportunities to no decision; if you're tired of inaccurate revenue forecasts; if your salespeople are not reaching decision-makers; if your sales team is long on industry experience but short on modern, professional sales skills; you need to find out how Sales Performance Associates' sales conditioning can get you back in the game.