Most companies have a well-defined, 3–5 year succession plan for their CEOs. The same is true for other leadership positions, including those within the sales organization. After all, a strong leadership succession plan ensures a steady pipeline of experienced and capable talent as key roles become available.

But, what about sales talent at the front line? Should companies prepare reps for the first line sales manager role? The answer most sales organizations are beginning to realize is a firm YES..!!

First line manager backfills are still based on strong performance in the rep role, but the requisite skills are different from those required of managers. In addition, the first line manager profile itself is simultaneously changing with the product-to-solutions transition and shifting of customer purchase preferences. This “double jump” represents a vexing challenge for “once-high-performing-rep” managers.

It’s not surprising then that star reps don’t always make star managers. Below is an analysis from a Fortune 500 company that attempts to estimate the cost of a failed first line sales manager: Read More »

“Reactive ”  —  “sporadic”  –  “misaligned”  –  “patchy at best”

These are a few of the words Sales leaders currently use to describe the effectiveness of their Sales Learning and Development (L&D) initiatives at changing sales rep behaviour. Both quantitatively and anecdotally, it seems that these poor, frustrating results (unfortunately) capture the state of affairs at most B2B sales organisations.

In fact, recent SEC data reveals that of the 80% of companies that have rolled out a major sales training initiative since 2008, only 16% deemed these initiatives to be very effective at driving behaviour change.

As we’ve dug deeper into this issue with our European and African members, we have received countless questions from organisations either overhauling or building from scratch their end-to-end sales L&D programs – most frequently termed “Academies”.

And while the idea of an Academy is interesting, what’s been truly surprising for us is the diversity of companies pursuing this path – everyone from Food and Beverage companies in South Africa and Utilities in the UK to Manufacturing companies in the Nordics and Financial Services firms in Continental Europe. Why is this a pressing issue right now for such a broad swath of companies?

Well, here are a few of the reasons that I’ve heard most frequently:   Read More »

Finding a new sales manager for your team is never easy – but that’s only half the battle. After you spend all of the time and effort selecting a new sales manager, how can you bring them on board effectively to make sure your sales team runs at full speed?

According to our sister program for heads of Learning and Development, it turns out that more than half of all new managers struggle in their new roles. Even more, the stakes are high of first-line sales manager failure – according to one member company, the average cost of a failed manager is nearly $4 million.

In order to set managers up for success, we’ve seen heads of Learning and Development start their managers off on the right foot by 1) structuring an approach to guide their transition into role 2) building a foundation for healthy relationships with their direct reports and 3) identifying an early “quick win” to establish managers as results-oriented leaders.

From a sales perspective, we’ve seen Dimension Data and CertainTeed create successful onboarding “boot camps” for new hires. While these best-practices are intended for front-line sales reps, you can use similar tactics to onboard new managers to the team.

As your managers approach their role in the immediate term and beyond, keep in mind these important keys to sales manager development needed for the success of their teams:   Read More »

With the Challenger Sale cracking Amazon’s top 10 sales & marketing book list before the book is publicly available, we’ve been getting lots of questions here at the Sales Executive Council about the research. Without fail, the top question is “what is the ROI of the Challenger Selling Model?”

Let’s put aside anecdote for a minute – we have lots of stories explaining how the Challenger Selling Model has worked at our member organizations – but let’s get down to what we know about Challengers: Read More »

It’s budget season, and with that comes that annual ritual of making business cases for various investments.  I’ve gotten quite a few requests lately about the ROI of skill development initiatives…everything from the overall impact of training/development in general to more specific questions about the impact that comes from very specific types of training (such as account planning or presentation skills).

These questions are difficult to answer directly for a number of reasons.  Part of the ROI is dependent upon what skill you’re building as well as the level of reps’ competency with that skill at the start of development.

Ongoing coaching also impacts return on development efforts.  Every company and every individual starts at a different level of skill, making the return on investment highly variable.

However, there are a few things you can look at to get closer to an answer.  Some of these approaches will help you fight for budget dollars now – others will give you ideas on how to better measure the impact of training you’ll be running in 2012. Read More »

There has been a lot of buzz around Challenger Reps recently. We’ve just announced the publication of our brand-new book The Challenger Sale; our SEC Solutions® team is successfully delivering a comprehensive Challenger Development Program to a growing number of companies; and, we’ve just learned that the name ‘Challenger Rep’ has been successfully registered so now we get to proudly put the ® symbol next to Challenger Rep®.

What this tells us is that more and more Sales organizations are looking to develop Challengers in their sales force. So, with that in mind, we wanted to share a few implementation lessons we’ve learned from companies who have already made the first strides in hiring and building Challengers. Read More »

By Kirsten Robinson

Indirect selling can be a great source of growth and additional revenue for organizations. But, most companies are still uncertain about how to do a better job of driving the right channel partner behaviors in a way that aligns partners’ sales abilities and incentives with their own long-term strategies.

And, given an unsteady economy, it comes as no surprise that channel partner organizations are risk adverse when it comes to making investments in rep development that don’t provide immediate positive results.

The good news is, with proper support and management, you can forge a better partnership…one that drives the right channel partner behaviors and increases partners’ emphasis on rep development.

At SEC, we’ve found that there are four key principles important to effective indirect channel management: Read More »

We’ve all observed at one point or another that the best sales reps don’t always make the best sales managers. Whether it’s a skill mismatch (being a star rep doesn’t mean you have the necessary people management skills) or an appeal thing (the rep simply doesn’t have interest in pursuing the manager track), what’s become clear is that organizations must start thinking about some non-traditional (aka non-managerial) career paths for senior sales reps.

This is easier said than done though. After all, you not only have to create a compelling career track but you must create one that makes the rep feel like they have (and are seen by others as having) a successful career path to take.

So, what can you do? Here are a few ideas…   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.

(This is a guest post by Matt Hoffman of the Customer Contact Council, our sister program for heads of Customer Service and Contact Centers.)

When speaking with members recently, one question has come up again and again:  “What does the rise of the Millennials mean for how we think about rep performance?”

The Millennials, the generation of people born between 1980 and 2000, are the newest, youngest employees in sales and service organizations.  While Millennials are generally given credit for being tech-savvy, they are also typically portrayed as entitled, self-centered brats.  Consider some of these descriptions of Millennials from a 60 Minutes profile:

• “They grew up laden with trophies just for participating.”
• “This generation only takes yes for an answer”
• “Narcissistic praise hounds are taking over your office!”

Ouch.

The members that we spoke to about rep performance wondered what they needed to do to get the best performance out of this new generation.  If the stereotypes are true, then sales and service organizations would need to reexamine how they hire, develop, and manage their reps.

Fortunately, a complete overhaul of management does not appear to be necessary.   Read More »