I am in the initial stages of planning LiquidPlanner’s sales kickoff meeting for 2016. One of the key agenda items will be sales training. Having attended several sales trainings, I know first-hand that they can be hit or miss depending on their delivery and relevance. As I start to engage with sales training companies, I wanted to share the questions that I will be using to both consistently and objectively evaluate their offerings. The list is not exhaustive and may change over time. Please let me know if I have missed any questions that you have found helpful.
Considerations for Sales Management:
◾Are the training company’s clients similar to our clients?
◾Can the training be incorporated into or integrated with existing systems and tools; e.g., Salesforce?
◾Does the training company have expertise with our target buyer personas and their specific contexts?
◾Does the training company have other modules or programs that can be added-on later?
◾Does the training company provide on-going e-learning/learning, reinforcement and support?
◾Does the training company’s sales philosophy match my sales philosophy (e.g., consultative selling)?
◾Does the training include frameworks and tools to help sales management coach and reinforce it?
◾How much time do I want to devote to the initial sales training; e.g., 1-2 days?
◾Is the training adaptable as the company and marketing, sales and service teams continues to evolve?
◾Is the training focused on where the company and team currently need improvement?
◾Is the training supported by management and other departments like customer success and marketing?
◾What are the training company’s deliverables such as curriculum, playbooks, tools, etc.?
◾What is the cost per head of the training?
◾What specific, measurable outcomes do we want to achieve from training?
◾Will the instructor have relevant, real-world experience?
Other Considerations: Is the training …
◾Account or territory focused … execution or planning focused … etc.?
◾Applicable to account management, sales and sales development?
◾Applicable to inside sales, outside sales or both?
◾Available offsite, onsite or both?
◾Customizable to our company’s products and services versus generically delivered?
◾Extensible to adjacent teams such as marketing and services?
◾Focused on strategy, tactics or both?
◾Focused on the how, when and where versus just the what.
◾Geared toward the generational makeup of our sales team (e.g., Millennials and Generation X)?
◾Helping us refine our repeatable, scalable sales process to deliver predictable revenue?
◾Recordable for subsequent onboarding and training?
◾Reflective of the current market context; e.g., inbound marketing, sales 2.0, social selling, etc.
◾Relevant to our average deal size and sales cycle?
◾Relevant to our target industries (e.g., IT) and segments (e.g., mid-market)?
◾Solution-oriented or more geared toward transactions?
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