SMT: Center for Sales Excellence

Measuring Training and Development Efforts is More Important Than Ever

by Susanne Conrad

 
Many training and development leaders say they don't measure the financial impact of their training and development programs because management doesn't ask them to do so. Measuring impact, however, should not be done solely at the request of the CEO. There are other very important reasons to measure.

Many T&D leaders fear measuring because the outcomes may show the learning interventions have no positive financial impact. Let's put that fear aside. Credibility with senior management comes not from proving that the resources you spent already were worth it. Resources spent are resources spent and cannot be recalled.

True credibility comes from demonstrating your dedication to continually improving your contributions to the organization. And that means having the guts to measure the impact of your efforts and being willing not only to say, "See, this is what we added to the bottom line with this training" but also being willing to say, "See, this didn't work as we expected/deliver the results we were looking for and, therefore, we need to make changes." 

Ultimately it is our responsibility as T&D leaders to make recommendations for the most effective use of resources allocated to T&D. The best way for us to make those recommendations and have them heard and accepted is to demonstrate that we are willing to measure results and adjust our approaches to deliver against goals - even when management has not asked for the measures.

Measures help us determine what has the most positive impact on the business, what we need to cut, what we need to adjust and what we need to do more of. Let's get over our fear of others' perceptions of "how well we did" and re-focus on building perceptions of how well we can adjust what we recommend and deliver based on objective information about what works and doesn't work for the organization.

THE QUESTION FOR YOU:
What keeps you from measuring the financial impact of your T&D efforts?

 

2011 Sales Force of the Future Study - Your Personal Invitation

by Susanne Conrad

Hello everyone, 
I'm please to personally invite you to participate in Dechert-Hampe's 4th bi-annual Sales Force of the Future Study! 

Click here to take the 10-minute survey:
2011 Sales Force of the Future Study

Please feel free to pass the link on to others at your organization - the more people from your company respond, the more statistically sound your results are!

Below is some info about the Study. For more details or previous study reports, please visit our webiste or contact me.

What makes this Study different:
This is a forward looking study that helps you plan your sales force development & resources. At explores:

1. Current retailer vendor skills/capabilities requirements compared to pre-recession requirements
2. A forward look at retailer requirements over the next three to five years

Study objective:
The objective is to identify those skills, capabilities and attributes an "Account Manager" or "Account Team" will need to meet a major customer's expectations in the next three to five years. You can use  this information to focus your organization on preparing your account management organization to meet those needs.

Valuable info you'll get from the study:
If you complete the contact info at the end of the study, I'll send you the following. Please note that contact info is not a requirement & I won't call or try to "sell" you - it's simply so I know where to send the study results.

1. Full study results about the skills and competencies needed by your sales force:
   
   • What other vendors say is important, how well they're doing & where their future focus is
   • Customer input about what's truly important to them and how their vendors are performing
   • What customers say will be important to them over the next three to five years
   • A look at how skills/competency needs have changed given the economy - and more importantly what customers believe will be needed as a result in the future
2. An optional comparison of your particular company's results vs. the study participants - so you can see where your gaps are (if you want this, please make a note to me when you give me contact info or contact me at the info below)

Confidentiality & Privacy
Your information will NOT be shared with others, rented or sold in any way whatsoever. DHC protects your privacy. Results will be reported in aggregate only (unless you contact me so I can send you your specific results vs. all participants).

 If you have any questions regarding the study, please contact me at Dechert-Hampe & Co. at (847) 559-0490 or email at sconrad@dechert-hampe.com

 

Great PowerPoint Tutorial

by Susanne Conrad

 

I came across a fun article about "death by PowerPoint" and how to avoid it.

The article has 5 tutorials attached to help avoid DBP. Enjoy:

http://www.mindflash.com/blog/2010/09/5-must-see-powerpoint-tutorials-for-creating-better-training/

Summer slowdown?

by Susanne Conrad 

It's summer!! Lots of people on vacation - notice how hard it is to reach people at the office?

That makes it difficult for some companies to schedule training during peak "vacation time". This seems to happen not only during the summer vacation peak but also around major holidays, e.g., Thanksgiving, Christmas, etc. Many L&D groups make a concerted effort to stay away from scheduling training around holidays, but "work through" the summer vacation peak. 

Of course, working through the summer vacation peak means L&D has to consider how to handle employees who are not able to attend training. The options are generally:

(a) Schedule on "make up" sessions
(b) Rely more on online sessions that can be completed around employee schedules
(c) Proceed with training regardless of number of attendees & plan ways to bring missing employees up to speed
(d) Re-schedule training for off-peak times

THE QUESTION FOR YOU:
How does your L&D group handle training during the summer vacation peak? Holidays?

How well are your sales people doing with regard to those KSAs?

by Susanne Ball

Last week we posed a few questions to consider when getting customer input as you're determining how best to develop your sales people. When asking for input, it's absolutely critical that you ask the right questions. And, those questions should be: 

1. What key knowledge, skills and abilities (KSAs) sales people bring to the table are important to the customer
2. How well your sales people are doing relative to those KSA's
3. How well your sales people are doing  on those KSAs relative to your competitors' sales people

This week, let's consider question 2. So here are a few things to think about - things I've learned from experience in conducting customer input activities on behalf of our clients:

1. Third parties are better at getting candid customer input
   Customers are significantly more comfortable, more open and honest, and more talkative when a third party conducts the survey. That's not surprising - they don't really want to say something bad about their sales rep to the sales rep's face (if that's who's asking the questions) or to someone in their vendor organization. In fact, the sales rep should be the absolute last person to ask the questions. The second choice: A person from your organization who is in no way connected to Sales.
2. Electronic vs. personal questions
   Given how busy everyone's schedule is and how notoriously difficult it is to get on buyer calendars, it won't surprise you that most customers/buyers prefer to complete electronic surveys than agree to a face-to-face or phone interview. Here are the differences to consider when you decide which route to go:
   > Electronic surveys tend to have significantly higher participation rates
   > In-person or phone interviews tend to have greater depth of feedback (most respondents really don't take much time to fill out those "any other comments" sections in a meaningful way vs. what they'll tell you impromptu)
3. Ask the right questions
   Once you have your organization's KSAs, don't forget to ask only about the appropriate KSAs when taking up a customer's time. Those that are appropriate:
   > Externally focused KSAs that involve an interaction with the customer
   > KSA's the customers can see demonstrated and make a judgment about.
4. Ask the questions the right way
   Wording is everything. Make sure you word questions so the customer can respond based on behavior/experience with your sales people. For example, don't ask "How good are our sales rep's creative thinking skills?" -- they don't really care and don't know. Ask what they care about instead: "Does our sales rep bring you new/innovative ideas to help you grow your business?"
5. Ask the right number of questions
   Don't strain your customer's patience - give some serious thought to how much time and effort the customer will need to commit to your questions. You shouldn't expect more than approximately 10 minutes under most circumstances. So, be selective about your questions to get the core information you need.
6. Give them a scale
   A scale of 1 to 5 works best. 1 to 3 isn't enough differentiation for you to judge performance - I'd put money on your ending up with a 2 across the board. A scale of 1 to 10 is too much nuance - what's the actual difference between a 6 and 7 average score????
7. Ensure anonymity of responses - and mean it!
   This is the surest way to get candid input - and a 3rd party is the best way to ensure customers believe their responses will be anonymous.
8. Beware the fallout or halo effect
   True story: I was recently conducting a customer survey for a client. All was going well. Suddenly, ALL responses to questions turned extremely negative and many previously scheduled respondents backed out of the survey. What happened??? Well, the vendor had just had a major logistics issue and couldn't ship product as expected. The vendor's anger was reflected in the survey - despite the fact that the sales rep had done absolutely nothing different and the logistics issue was not her fault. The opposite can of course be true as well: a customer is extremely happy with your product or service despite your sales rep and, therefore, rates your sales rep's KSA performance higher than it actually is. A customer will take the entire relationship with your company into consideration when you're questioning them - so a word of caution about knowing "what else" in the relationship is influencing participation or the way your customer responds. Careful questioning and asking questions a few different ways may help.

Next week, let's tackle question 3.

THE QUESTIONS FOR YOU:
What are your experiences getting customer input on KSA performance? What pitfalls or advice can you share?

Customer Input for Sales Leader Development

by Susanne Conrad

Last week we started a discussion of "sales leaders". This week I wanted to touch on how important it is to get your customers' input when determining how best to develop your sales people. When asking for input, it's absolutely critical that you ask the right questions. And, those questions should be: 

1. What key knowledge, skills and abilities (KSAs) sales people bring to the table are important to the customer
2. How well your sales people are doing relative to those KSA's
3. How well your sales people are doing  on those KSAs relative to your competitors' sales people

This week, let's examine the first of these questions a bit more closely: What key knowledge, skills and abilities (KSAs) sales people bring to the table are important to the customer

Why bother asking this question?

To answer this question, the first step you must take is to identify all the possible KSAs you'd like your sales force to have - internally and externally facing KSAs that is. Rank how important each KSA is to your organization. Then, ask the customer to rank what's most important to them.

Realize that what's important to your organization may not necessarily be important to the customer. For example, in DHC's Sales Force of the Future study series, it's always true that some KSAs are ranked extremely highly by manufacturers/suppliers while they are ranked extremely low on the customer's list (e.g., internal financial acumen - customers really don't care if your sales person understands the financial model of your own organization. They DO care that the sales person understands the customer financial model).

Now, just because your customer doesn't care so much about some of the key KSAs does not mean you shouldn't be developing those in your sales force. In the example above, it's obviously extremely important that your sales people understand your company's financial model.

The point is this: if you're going to put your limited resources against something in sales development for the year, you need to determine what that will be and what impact it will have on your bottom line - if for no other reason that to set expectations for your management team. Asking the customer what's most important to him/her will help you decide how to use your resources. You may still decide to focus on developing an internally facing skill, but you'll understand the bottom line impact will likely not be the same as the bottom line impact of developing a KSA that's important to the customer.

Developing a sales force stronger in the KSAs that are important to the customer may very well give you a leg up over the competition. Consider this example. You pride yourself on having a sales force that develops extremely strong relationships with the customer. In fact, you focus a good part of your development on interpersonal skills and relationship building and that's come through in customer satisfaction surveys that indicate your sales people are great at the vendor-customer relationship.

But, what if you find that your customer ranks the relationship of average importance, far overshadowed by the ability of sales people to apply consumer behavior statistics and data to develop strong consumer marketing campaigns for them. The vendor-customer relationship remains important, but if you could also develop strong analytical skills and the ability to creatively use the data during the sales process, your sales people stand a far better chance of being considered best-in-class all around.

You mean you want me to actually ask them directly?

Uh-huh! As in, "Hello Mr./Ms. Customer, how important are these to you?" vs. "our sales people tell us this is what's important to the customer." Trust me, sales people don't know as much about what the customer thinks as the sales people think they know about what the customer thinks. Why? Well:

• These aren't conversations sales people usually have with customer -- they simply aren't part of a typical sales interaction. Sales people extrapolate what they think is important to the customer based on the the sales conversation.
• Customers are often loath to talk so directly about KSAs with sales people for fear of implying something negative about the sales person's abilities or knowledge. They'd much rather talk to a third party about these issues.

Why do we hesitate to ask customers?

Many companies back away from directly asking customers for input vs. relying on the input of the sales force. Why is this the case?

• Companies fear an implied obligation to act on the input
• Customers may not wish to participate in the survey and being turned down may be awkward
• Sales may fear loss of relationship control if a third party speaks with the customer
• Companies may not really want to know what the customer input is because they have a customer paradigm they'd rather not alter

A couple of notes on my experiences in conducting customer surveys of KSAs:

• Customers will often be very frank with a 3rd party about their expectations and their vendor's performance
• Customers like it when they're asked directly - it indicates the vendor is truly interested in them &the relationship/performance
• There's no shame in being turned down by a customer you've asked to participate in a survey - it may be nothing more than corporate policy or schedules that hinder participation, not a relationship problem
• You will get more valuable, robust and accurate information from your customer directly than any other source

Let's pick up with question 2 next week - see you then!

THE QUESTIONS FOR YOU:
Do you ask your customers about the KSAs that are important to them?
If so, how do you go about asking them these questions?
If not, why not?

Sales Leaders

by Susanne Conrad

I came across an article on developing leaders in Workforce Management that got me thinking about a  conversation with a Sales Training Manager who talked about "developing leaders" in their sales organization. The gist of it went something like this:

"We really want to create sales leaders instead of sales people. In other words, a sales force that acts like this is their own business. Entrepreneurial types. People who think outside the box. People who take initiative and make the right call on the spot and have the background, knowledge, skills and abilities to do so. So, we're going to create a development program that gives them instructions and steps to act as leaders and to be entrepreneurial within the parameters we set out along with the forms and tools needed to do so."

I don't know about you, but my first thought was, "You can't prescribe/lay out steps for acting as a leader or to be entrepreneurial/creative." In my opinion, leadership is a quality, not a series of steps. And laying out a process for thinking creatively/outside the box is just forcing people into another box. Besides, leadership and creativity are two different, although very often linked, issues to address. 

Let's hone in on the "leadership" aspect - many of our clients are focused on developing sales leaders. In fact, many of them have used "sales leader" somewhere in the name of their development initiatives (e.g., "Sales Leader of the Future" and "Sales Leader Development"). It's absolutely true that some sales people need to be sales leaders given the nature of their customer/account/sale type/industry/marketplace/competition, etc. It's equally true that not all sales people need to be leaders. Some sales people just need to be extremely good transaction-focused sales people. It's like having an entire army made up of generals - it wouldn't work. An effective, efficient army definitely needs great generals, but it also needs great troops.

I think that it is extremely important for an organization to define exactly what it means by "sales leader" and who/where/when they need these leaders. Then, the organization should make sure they understand which customers/accounts really want/need a "sales leader" calling on them. Developing programs for sales leaders and exceptional/effective sales people are different animals.

THE QUESTIONS FOR YOU:
> Does your organization have a focus on developing sales leaders?
> Does your organization distinguish who needs to be a sales leader and who needs to be an exceptional sales person?

How to Hire a Client

by Susanne Conrad

This week I thought I'd specifically address those in our SMT membership who are service/product providers to sales and marketing L&D folks.

There isn’t a provider I know of who doesn't want to grow his/her business. But, if you’re working with a client that is difficult, unappreciative or impossible to satisfy, etc. there’s little room for fulfillment or satisfaction and very often a significant probability that you'll be unable to make a profit on your work. So, it's important to keep in mind that although a potential client is deciding whether or not to purchase your services or product, you too are making a choice and in the position of saying "yes" or "no" to taking that person or company on as your client.

The question becomes: "How do you, the provider, determine whether or not to work with a client?"

Let's put aside the most obvious qualifiers like: Do they actually have the funds to pay for the work they contract for; is there a good match between what the client needs and the solutions you can provide, etc. Instead, let's delve into the more subtle aspects of the provider-client relationship.

Heed the red flags!
While it's often difficult to spot problematic situations in advance, there are often tell tale signs - signs we may ignore in our haste to get another client or because we're not paying attention. 

Certainly we can all be fooled into thinking we’ve connected with a great client only to discover we’ve made a mistake - that's true from both sides of the consultant-client relationship. But, experience and attention are great teachers of the signals and indicator for whether your potential client is someone you want to work with.

Red flags? What red flags?

Level of Trust - Do you sense that despite your providing robust background information, references, work examples, case studies, etc., they seem to doubt your ability or expertise? Do they respect your time and efforts? Do they extend you the same courtesy you show? Do you sense they're giving you a real shot at the work or are they "on a fishing expedition" for material/solutions?

Respect for Your Intellectual Capital - Do you sense (or worse yet, have evidence) that the potential client will share your work, your methodology, your tools, etc. beyond what is acceptable within the scope of the "purchase" they're contracting?

Good Style Match - Is your working style and energy level and the potential client's congruent/productive/complementary?  Is the potential client open to mutually adjusting work styles to ensure a good outcome?

There are, I'm sure, many more "red flags" we should we watching for.

THE QUESTION FOR YOU
What indicates to you that you're about to hire a great client?

Your favorite game - the key to your style?

Remember that conversation in Pretty Woman where Edward and his lawyer were discussing their favorite childhood game? Edward liked building blocks (he ends up ditching a huge business profit so he can build ships) and his lawyer liked Monopoly (he lives for the financial kill). Yes, the games we gravitate toward are aligned with our experience, strengths and personal styles.

Our challenge when developing "games" for L&D programs is to develop interesting learning activities. But can those "games" inhibit learning as well? Of course, they can.

I recall a situation where a non-training subject matter expert (I note his background only to illustrate that it's not something the lay person usually thinks about) came up with an activity he thought would be extremely effective but fell flat. The activity was a fairly simple role play in which some participants role played a sales call while others acted as the "buyer". The problem was that many participants were so new to sales that they had no idea how a buyer would act or respond. Their level of discomfort was so strong that a few refused to play their parts. Others did such a poor job that learning was minimal. The situation was easily resolved by bringing in a few seasoned reps for the activity to act as buyers.

The point is simply that we need to take into consideration that because we, the developers of L&D games, may find the game extremely worthwhile, interesting and engaging, we must always consider it from the participant's perspective.

THE QUESTION FOR YOU
What advice can you share relative to creating audience-appropriate games and activities?

Developing a Business Manager rather than a Sales Rep

 
by Susanne Conrad

Developing effective customer-facing employees and equipping them with the tools to succeed in today’s complex business environment - in other words, developing a "business manger" - is paramount to being both competitive and profitable. Unfortunately, many attempts to do this fail to deliver the desired results because they are missing a key component: basing development on objective data regarding what the customer really cares about.

Despite there being a number of informative studies on sales force skills and capabilities, the vast majority of these are historic analyses. Few of them look to future requirements – and yet the future is at the very heart of planning sales development. Why train employees on what was important in the past or only for today? Why not look to the future to see what customers want next year or two to three years from now? Why not prepare employees for those requirements now and gain the competitive edge by ensuring their readiness for the challenges and opportunities of the future? 

Interestingly, very few studies include direct input from customers but rely, instead, strictly on input from manufacturer organizations. Such information cannot be considered totally objective, nor does it identify divergences in perspective between manufacturers and retailers. In the words of a retailer participant, “They assume they know what I want because they talk to me often. If they really want to know what’s important to me, ask me that directly.”

Ideally, organization should consider these elements when identifying a curriculum for sales reps: 

            —   What is important to manufacturer and retailer (customer) – now and in the future?

            —   How well are we performing – the company's perspective vs. the customer's perspective?

 

            —   What are the trends in importance and performance across time - in other words, are we doing the right things or do we need to change direction?

One way (a cost-free way at that!) to fill your information gap and allow your organization to develop solid, forward-looking sales force development strategies is to participate in DHC's ongoing Sales Force of the Future Study (SFOTF). Take advantage of trending DHC has been collecting since 2002. Check it out - there's a lot of great (and, yes, free) information: Sales Force of the Future Study