The topic of sales competencies and rep development has been coming up quite frequently in our recent conversations with members.  Some sales leaders are getting more frustrated with training’s failure to make behavior changes “stick”; some have started realizing that the new economy calls for a new set of skills that is largely lacking in reps; and some are simply looking for ways to boost rigor around training to increase the likelihood of success.

All good reasons to be talking to us, especially as we’ve learned that nearly two-thirds of all sales reps (61%) are unsatisfied with the business and sales skill training provided by their companies.

The bad news is we know that training alone has a relatively small impact on improving productivity – only 22%.  The good news is companies that take a more comprehensive development approach— integrating training, coaching, and real-world experience—have seen a 4 fold increase in productivity up to 88%.

We’ve set out to find what it is these companies do differently and will be tackling this subject of training and rep development over the next few months. Here’s what we have learned so far:

1) Do not limit rep development to just classroom learning.  Our research shows that reps forget 87% of training content within 30 days. Most of the actual learning and skill improvement happens as reps repeatedly “apply” and “perfect” new knowledge and skills on the job with continuous support and reinforcement from their managers.      Read More »

Tacit selling skills have always been important, but as our work on the new high-performing sales rep has shown, these skills (things like tailoring and asserting control) are absolutely crucial for success in today’s more complex selling environment.  

The problem is, tacit skills don’t lend themselves well to traditional rep upskilling approaches. Classroom training alone is insufficient because these skills require judgment and context (things that that can’t be accurately captured with process and how-to guides), and coaching by itself can also be insufficient, because managers may struggle to explain and demonstrate these intangible concepts.

In fact, the best way for reps to acquire tacit skills is through experiential learning.

One way for reps to gain this experience is to practice in live-fire settings, in front of the customer. But I think we’d all agree, that can be incredibly risky—things can go horribly wrong if not done well. 

So, the other way to provide reps with experience is to practice via role plays in training and coaching sessions. But the problem with role plays is that they typically feel so artificial. Usually, you break up in pairs and someone says, “OK, you’re the rep, and I’m the customer…” and off you go. Not only is the exercise too fake to feel real, it’s too fake to feel valuable. 

So how do you find the compromise?  How do you simulate a customer interaction with a high degree of reality, but a low level of risk?

St. Jude Medical came up with a pretty ingenious answer to those questions. St. Jude split the difference between the fakeness of internal coaches and the riskiness of actual customers by having reps role play with someone they named the “customer proxy.”    Read More »

One drawback of being a consultant is that the first response to most questions can end up being a variation of “it depends”. It’s thus a wonderful thing that the question we are asked most often here at the Council has a simple, absolute answer. The question is about the number of direct reports that a sales manager should have. And the answer is: 8.

In our 2010 study of sales leadership, we found that the median span of control for a sales manager was 8 (the average was a little higher at 9.84, basically at 1:10). In 2008, the median was again 8. In 2007, the median span of control was a little lower at 7.4.

Part of why this number has to be 8 is driven by how a sales manager spends their time.  Assuming that a sales manager spends their time in a standard fashion, they will have approximately 8 hours a week to devote to coaching. And if we assume that a meaningful coaching interaction is about spending 3-5 hours with somebody per month, then that means that your average sales manager can coach 2 people per week. Assuming 4 weeks a month, that means that your average sales manager can manage a maximum of 8 people.

If you were ambitious, then you might assume that a sales manager can spend up to 3 days in the field, which would suggest that the maximum number of direct reports a sales manager can closely manage is probably around 12 people. But the manager with that many direct reports cannot be long responsible for too many reports or too many other things; they simply don’t have the time and they will likely leave a cross-section of their direct reports to essentially fend for themselves.

But there’s something about the consistency of the number eight across firms that is fascinating, and it made me wonder if others had observed a similar thing.  Read More »

For many years, the Council has been preaching the mantra of having sales managers spend at least 3 hours a month on coaching and developing each direct report. This year’s work on sales manager effectiveness has dramatically re-confirmed that advice.

It is once again true that the average amount of time a manager spends with their direct reports is the best, single predictor of the quality of the relationship. Once somebody spends a material amount of time with their manager, it is then more of a matter of what happens in that time.

The alarming part is that 47% of reps report receiving under the magic 3 hours and 6% of reps report receiving no coaching at all. Thus, for many sales leaders the simple advice is to start by inspecting how some managers spend their time. When you don’t see an average of 3 hours occurring, then you should try and engineer an occasion where you can observe the manager and the rep work together.

Sometimes you will find that the rep has no great desire to spend time with their manager. Depending on the rep’s performance level this might be an acceptable reaction, though not one you would like to encourage. This is when you might want to consider moving reporting relationships.

A lot of the time, the issue is simple lack of staying power. The weekly pull-ups are too easy to push off since something else will always seem more urgent. This is where a simple coaching pulse survey can work wonders as it permits periodic inspection and sends a clear message that senior managers value these interactions. Read More »

I’ve had a lot of members over the last couple of weeks ask me essentially the same question – “How should we measure and evaluate our efforts to build Challenger™ reps?” 

The actual measures will be different depending on your go-to-market model and the length of your sales cycle, but there are several universal measurement principles that can be applied to any business:

Measuring Adoption:

Adoption is a tricky metric to measure, because of two challenges:

1. Just because a rep says they delivered a pitch, doesn’t mean that they delivered it well
2. Just tracking what sales did gives you little insight into how a customer reacted to that sales interaction

In light of those two challenges, consider the following two ideas:

Periodic internal “spot checks” from either the management team or some other vetting team (comprised of people who are deemed “the best” at delivering the pitch) would be subjective, but helpful – you could then cross reference that with reps’ actual sales results. 

For a concrete example of this, see the process and scorecard that Britannia developed for measuring coaching interactions.  You can take the principles of this scorecard and apply it to reps and Challenger behaviors. 

Another member that has done a lot of work around “teaching” is W.W. Grainger.  Grainger doesn’t necessarily measure whether a rep delivered a teaching pitch, but rather that the customer completed a diagnostic that complements the sales pitch.  This could only mean the teaching pitch was delivered well – because otherwise a customer would never care about completing the diagnostic.  For similar ideas about measuring customer reactions and “customer verifiers,” review our Improving Sales Predictions study.  Read More »

I’ve always wished the Winter Olympics included some sort of a Decathlon. Isolated mastery of skis, skates, or curling stones is impressive, but in my view, the truest tests of athleticism are cross-functional. Show me the athlete who can bobsled down a hill, play three periods of hockey, and then cross-country ski back up!

In sales we of course expect our front-line managers to epitomize multi-functional excellence – so perhaps there is an opportunity here for comparison. Let’s dig into the Olympic history books to learn a bit about how sales managers can be more successful in their own daily decathlons. Read More »