It would be difficult to find a modern sales organization that does not provide training for their quota-carriers, and yet fewer than half take the additional step of serving up post-training reinforcement to support those lessons learned. Our new Research Report explores the performance results and business competencies of companies who emphasize sales learning not only as an event, but as a lifestyle.
Aberdeen’s annual market research around sales training, most recently published in Let’s Make a Deal: Best-in-Class Coaching Can Shorten Your Sales Cycle, identified that only 44% of survey respondents “provide post-training reinforcement of content presented in initial educational sessions.” By itself, this fact is somewhat surprising, given the virtually unlimited amount of user-generated content, always-on mobile technologies, and competitive threats that inform the day-to-day business of contemporary sales leaders. Is it possible that the majority of organizations perform little more than due diligence around educating their market-facing sellers? Is it believable that they wouldn’t take advantage of communications platforms and tribal knowledge solutions to consistently up-level the competencies of their reps and channel partners? Sadly, yes it is – we’re talking about the average masses here — but when survey respondents are isolated into performance and behavior cohorts, we find that Best-in-Class companies are 15% more likely than All Others, 54% vs. 47%, to follow-up traditional sales training with various methods of educational reinforcement.
Segmenting Out The Serial Trainers
Not only do top-performing companies emphasize ongoing training more than other firms, they also report higher adoption levels of additional knowledge management capabilities:
A central repository of sales best practices / tools is available to reps and managers (73% vs. 46%)
Actively seek to capture institutional knowledge from more seasoned sales staff, in order to transfer it to newer generations of sellers (66% vs. 38%)
User-generated marketing and sales content, including references / testimonials, is available to sales reps and managers (64% vs. 52%)
Sales managers receive customized training and content, distinct from that offered to sales reps (56% vs. 38%)
Identify internal subject matter experts (SMEs) whose expertise is available to members of the sales team (51% vs. 48%)
These best practices may all seem like no-brainers to highly evolved, modern sales leaders, but on average, fewer than half of all companies, 45%, deploy these competencies. When, however, we segment out those organizations focusing on post-training reinforcement, and compare them with non-adopters, this average rises to 56%. This means that the 114 companies identified as “post-training reinforcers” are 24% more often deploying these Best-in-Class capabilities. They are also, as seen in Figure 1, achieving measurably better business results:
Figure I: Better Training, Superior Performance Results
The largest performance delta reflected in Figure 1, the percentage of first-year sales reps hitting their number, showcases the fact that post-training reinforcers see 34% more new sales hires (55% vs. 41%) achieving the quota designed for them by their leaders. The impact of this data cannot be over-stated. Indeed, we know from Aberdeen’s Beyond the Commission: Will You Stay Ahead of the SPM Maturity Curve? that replacing a typical B2B sales professional costs over $29,000, and takes 7.3 months away from full productivity in any given sales territory. With these stakes in mind, it only makes sense to take advantage of every opportunity to maximize the percentage of both new and seasoned reps who are realizing their potential, and hopefully earning healthy over-quota override commissions. Now, let’s take a closer look at the core competencies that post-training reinforcers adopt to support the investments they make in their people, and these enviable business results.
Best-In-Class Core Competencies: Aligning Smart Management With Sales Education
In Figure 2, we identify four business processes that top-performing sales leaders adopt more frequently than lesser accomplished organizations, in the context of how post-training reinforcers deploy more aggressively than companies who simply provide up-front training for their sales staff, and nothing more. In fact, three of these processes – all except “analyze customer data” – represent best practices that are used even more frequently by post-training reinforcers than by Best-in-Class organizations. They also represent a great instructional pathway for sales and executive leaders themselves:
Handing a new rep or channel partner a product guide, price list, script, and territory, and then sending them off to sink or swim in the field, is not exactly a best practice for any sales manager. It also does not qualify as a formal sales methodology, a process capability reported by 73% of Best-in-Class firms, compared with 72% and 59% respectively among Industry Average and Laggard organizations. A well-designed sales methodology represents a significant investment by enterprises that take an objective look at the business of selling in their individual market space. They step back from day-to-day deal-making to understand what kind of communications, content, and cadences are most successful on a long-term basis, and build out extensive playbooks that arm their sellers with an always-growing library to support their customer acquisition and management efforts. Post-training reinforcers are 64% more likely (82% vs. 50%) than non-adopters to collect sales lessons learned on-the-fly by the entire team, and continuously incorporate them into their ever-evolving methodology.
Figure 2: Process Capabilities: Taking a Holistic Approach toward Long-Term Sales Knowledge
Everyone loves a big sales deal, and the most successful organizations analyze customer data to maximize up-selling possibilities. Many enterprises employ sales reps who not only bring in new accounts, but service those customers for the duration of their client lifetime. If a company only provides initial, one-time or onboarding training for their sales staff, those individual contributors are less likely to understand how to improve the “share of wallet” for their customers, compared with their counterparts in companies that continuously educate their team members around adding revenue and value to their client relationships over time.
Why are post-training reinforcers 64% more likely than all others (63% vs. 39%) to conduct win / loss analyses on closed deals? Because they more aggressively embrace the spirit of continuous learning at an institutional level, and have learned that the time and resources associated with sales postmortem activity are worthy investments that support long-term institutional knowledge. Indeed, we know from You Win Some, You Lose Some: How Best-in-Class Sales Leaders Learn as They Go that companies consistently performing win / loss analyses performed far better than other organizations. They are also 45% more likely (55% vs. 38%) to indicate to Aberdeen that “our sales leaders collaborate with human resource functions to ensure best-practice utilization for sales hiring, on-boarding, succession planning, or learning and development.” In other words, they get it.
Finally, 57% of Best-in-Class firms report a process for collecting and sharing tribal knowledge, a rate exceeded by post-training reinforcers who understand that today’s millennial sellers are far more willing and comfortable to share with one another, as compared to 20th-century quota-carriers. A generation ago, a sales rep was expected to acquire skills and knowledge predominantly from managers above them in the corporate food chain. Modern enterprise social collaboration platforms are designed to leverage the changing mindset of individual contributors, and help provide companies committed to lifelong sales education with technology platforms that complement their commitment to learning that clearly pays measurable dividends.
Interested in more detail? Here is the report.