Do you really need sales training?

Charles Besondy, President of Besondy Consulting & Interim Management, writes...

Is revenue flat or heading south? Time to invigorate the sales force with the latest sales techniques, right? New head of sales takes the reins with the job of transforming the revenue engine. Time to bring in the sales trainers, right?

Maybe yes. Maybe no. Upon closer examination, your revenue problem may not be due to a lack of sales skills.

The pros at MathMarketing (for whom I am a certified Funnel Coach in North America) can point to case study after case study of clients who approached them for sales training (they also provide Miller Heiman training in Australia) only to see that what they really needed was something very different.

Try asking yourself three questions.

• “Is our revenue problem the result of Sales not being able to close opportunities effectively and efficiently?” If the answer is yes odds are good that sales training is the ticket.  But, try asking two more questions.
• “Is the root cause of the revenue problem related to either lead quality or lead quantity?” If a brutally objective evaluation of your revenue engine reveals that lead quantity and quality are not adequate, what you should consider is Marketing training, not Sales training. I’m not talking about the 45-minute-free-webinar-on-email-marketing type of training either. For an example of black belt marketing training visit Funnel Academy. Now for the third question...
• “Is there a lack of efficient and effective progression of  names, prospects and opportunities  through the sales funnel?” Two good indicators of this issue are an elongated sales cycle and a growing number of prospects who drop out of the funnel.

Don’t be surprised if upon closer evaluation you decide that #3 is the root cause of your problem. Many companies come to this conclusion. What’s usually behind this performance-killer is a lack of a clear, measurable action plan that tightly aligns the tactics of Sales and Marketing throughout the funnel.

MathMarketing has a rapid methodology for guiding companies to close the gap between strategy and revenue results. It has worked wonders for companies  large and small on four continents. We call it Funnel Camp. It aligns Sales and Marketing in a way that dramatically improves revenue generation efficiency and effectiveness.

Sales training will move the needle for your organization if the root cause of your revenue generation headache is a deficiency in Sales skills. But make sure you look deeply into the cause before deciding to go down the Sales training path.

Charles Besondy is the President of Besondy Consulting & Interim Management, and an accredited MathMarketing Funnel Coach. To read more of his insights, go to The Sales Funnel Fanatic blog.

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