Do you ever feel like your salespeople forget almost everything you coach them on? There are few things more frustrating than a seller repeating the same mistakes over and over, no matter how hard you try to show them the better way.

Why does this happen?

An easy conclusion to draw might be that our salespeople are simply hard-headed. As one sales trainer recently joked to us, “The term ‘adult learner’ is HR-speak for ‘excruciatingly-slow learner.”  And while there may be some merit to this suggestion, our research also tells us that there is another side to this story. While salespeople may at times be slow – or even outright resistant – to behavior change, many managers may also be coaching in all the wrong ways.

Here’s how:  A little known fact is that there are two very distinct types of sales coaching – Deal-Level and Skill-Level. Both are important, yet data from our Coaching Pulse Survey consistently shows that most of us over-prioritize Deal-Level coaching at the expense of Skill-Level. This may have worked in years past, but it becomes highly problematic in the age of Challenger Selling.

Here’s why: Read More »

We hope you’ll read this and share this.

It’s a unique occasion when we get to step back from the day-to-day of supporting our members’ decisions and reflect on where we believe the world of sales is headed. In 2011, the SEC had thousands of interactions with sales executives around the globe, held dozens of conferences and intimate roundtable discussions with leading CSOs, and examined hundreds of thousands data points.

Given this, we’d like to share the fundamental shifts we expect to play out in increasingly significant ways in 2012.

Granted, it’s not a MECE list – there is overlap and implications shared throughout these trends, but we hope you’ll take a minute and reflect on how these trends are manifesting in your own organization, disagree if appropriate, and highlight trends you expect to see that we missed. It’s meant to be a reflective, but fun list. We look forward to your input! Read More »

There are 21 NFL Hall of Fame coaches, yes, just 21.  As we start the playoff run of this NFL season, we are reminded that winning championships not only takes great players on the field, but also great coaches and leaders.

The question often asked is – are great coaches made or born?  Well, according to Vince Lombardi, “Leaders aren’t born, they are made. And they are made just like anything else, through hard work. And that’s the price we’ll have to pay to achieve that goal, or any goal.”

But, we still ask this same question in Sales – is a sales manager born a great coach or can a sales manager become a great coach?

The good news – our research at the Sales Executive Council shows we CAN make great coaches, which means there are more than just a few “Hall of Fame” sales coaches out there.

But now the question becomes, HOW do we foster successful coaching in our sales organizations?  What’s required to make “Hall of Fame” sales coaches?   Read More »

By Kirsten Robinson

So, you’re looking to build up your team of sales reps. You know you want high-quality reps. You also know that the best reps are being courted by other companies, too. What do you do? You throw your efforts and resources into piquing the interest of and then hiring that sales talent.

But, this is where many companies take a wrong turn. After spending tremendous amounts of money to hire new talent, they underinvest in onboarding those new staff.

This can cause several problems: higher washout rates, missed opportunities to engage top performers, and extended time horizons for reps to reach full productivity.

We recently spoke with Christine Wolff, VP of Sales Development at Dimension Data, and Jim Williams, Director of Learning and Development at CertainTeed Corporation, about how their companies have been onboarding new hires in ways that speed up time to full proficiency and decrease turnover.

SEC members, learn more about how Dimension Data and CertainTeed execute onboarding by reading excerpts from our Q&A with Christine Wolff and Jim Williams.

With all of the SEC’s available resources, it can be tough to know where to begin—so why not get started with some Pharma fan-favorites?

We compiled a list of the most downloaded SEC resources that your peers in the Pharma industry are using to help them excel at their jobs.

Here are a few must-reads to add to your list:

Top 3 SEC Resources for Pharma Sales Professionals

1. Replicating the New High Performer

What it is: SEC Pharma members’ most popular download, this research details how a single rep profile—the “Challenger”—is five times more likely to be a high performer than the type of rep most companies are creating–the “Relationship Builder”.

Why your peers use it:

• To compare the sales rep “winning” profile to traditional rep behavior types
• To hire and train their teams on how to replicate Challenger™ behaviors and skills
• To equip managers to coach the Challenger behaviors

Read More »

The fast lane to having unengaged, dissatisfied sales reps is through a sales manager community that focuses solely on outcomes.

As a rep, there’s nothing worse than dreading your one-on-ones with your manager, as you’re likely to only hear, “Your conversion rate is way down.  What’s the problem?  Aren’t you following the process?”

That’s what we refer to as ‘spreadsheet coaching’, and it’s focused only on business results, not behaviors.

As I prepare for the Council’s upcoming teleconference on coaching in today’s buying environment (SEC Members, register for the webinar here), I’m reminded of a best practice we profiled that describes how a company managed to work around this challenge by developing a clever coaching roadmap. Read More »

By Kirsten Robinson

Odds are high that your company is wasting valuable training dollars. Within 30 days, reps lose a whopping 87% of what they learned in training—and 61% of reps are unsatisfied with their company’s programs to improve business and sales skills.

The most common reasons why traditional training fails are 1) rep resistance to learning new skills, and 2) on-the-job barriers that disrupt opportunities to practice them. Teaching skills through textbook learning just isn’t enough. Progressive companies realize that the real learning happens when reps can practice skills in the field, discovering for themselves what does and doesn’t work.

Gen-i, a B2B telecommunications company, designed their Sales Academy to minimize reps’ rejection of training and to provide ongoing opportunities to apply their newly acquired skills in real-world situations.  Their start-to-finish framework led to a 77% increase in reps satisfied with the program.

We talked to John Woodyard, the creator of Gen-i’s Sales Academy, about how they make training stick by: Read More »

By Kirsten Robinson

“Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.”

While I haven’t done a lot of fishing lately, there’s a valuable lesson to be learned from this old proverb. Let’s look at it from a sales perspective. If a manager tells a rep what to do, the rep probably will do well in a call. If a manager coaches a rep on how to perform effectively, the rep will likely retain the knowledge, improve their skills, and ultimately contribute to the greater success of their team.

Most managers realize the benefits of coaching reps (e.g., improving team performance up to 19%)—yet they too often resort to simply telling them what to do.

So, how can you get managers to be better coaches? An executive in our Sales Talent Management Forum recently posed this question, starting a dialogue between members. Here are a few of the takeaways from their discussion: Read More »

I’ve been getting a large number of M&A-related questions lately, specifically on how to integrate two different sales forces, the challenges posed by new or changing roles and responsibilities of reps and managers, as well as the shuffling of accounts that normally accompany a merger. To help, I’ve compiled here some key learnings gathered from members who have integrated two different sales forces into one.

There’s not much here regarding the HOW – and that is by design – the idea of this is to validate what you’re doing as well as identify some areas were you could be putting a little more rigor.  At that point, we have resources (tools, templates, processes, etc) we can share with you to help you execute more efficiently and effectively in all of these areas.

At the highest level, you should think of M&A challenges on three levels:  customer, rep, and manager. And interestingly, of those three levels, the place most companies struggle isn’t the rep level—where they focus all of their time and energy—it’s the manager level.

Let’s review some of the key considerations you must take into account for each level:   Read More »

By Kirsten Robinson

We all know that saying, “Practice makes perfect”—but what if your reps aren’t getting the practice they need? It’s not enough to practice scenarios in the classroom; real-world experience is necessary for skill development. Without enough realistic practice, reps are set up for failure and may be deterred from applying the new skills they’ve learned in training. The problem though is that for most reps, experiential practice opportunities only crop up sporadically.

So, how can you make sales training stick?

Leading companies work with their reps to deliberately engineer real-world application opportunities.

During a recent Council webinar, Dave Horton, Director of Global Sales Operations for Siemens Water Technologies, shared insights and strategies for improving reps’ skills through experiential practice using manager/rep coaching trips.

SEC members, read a few takeaways from the discussion with Dave. You can also listen to the full-length webinar on Mastering New Sales Skills in Just Two Days.