An office furniture company put their entire sales team into a sales training program. The team was comprised of a number of strong personalities but the only similarity amongst them is that they worked for the same company. Each had their own focus in selling, walking in different circles of influence, and there happened to be a significant age gap between them.
The company was puzzled as to why the sales training program wasn’t working. The employees grew more disengaged and frustrated as the program continued. The program ended and the company had invested a significant amount of money with little results to show for it.
Sales training doesn’t work if the sales processes have not been identified for the specific company and its sales team. Trying to apply a program where there’s little ability to vary the model, can do more harm than good. Applying a strategic planning model to the sales process had far greater results. We were able to apply this methodology to identify the unique sales processes according to size of company, industry, product line, as well as what motivated customers to buy and develop a long-term relationship.
Once we understood the true sales processes, we moved to the sales team. We used personality and mental aptitude assessments to help the company align the sales team to their strengths in sales. By doing this, we would then coach their sales team with a more targeted focus to their needs.
We identified a host of gaps and developed goals and a plan by using our Problem Solving process. We determined Key Performance Indicators (KPI) that could more specifically single out areas of growth, plateau, or decline. This process did not happen in a vacuum. It took participation and commitment from ownership, management, and sales to implement. The results came steadily and were well worth the time, money, and resources.
If this sounds like an issue that you are experiencing, contact Michael & Mary