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contact us careers Sales Training Sales Consulting Software Research Sales Training – The Next Practice for Learning Management Systems Posted on Mon, Dec 10, 2012 @ 12:42 PM Tweet Sales Training – The Next Practice for Learning Management Systems By Michael Rochelle of Brandon Hall Group The world economy has created a complex and expansive competitive environment for most companies. Competition used to be the “guy around the corner”. Now your chief competitor may be half way around the globe. Adding to this complexity is the highly evolved buy decision-making processes of both consumers and businesses. Buyers are more sophisticated than ever. Driven by the economic conditions that we all face and armed with a plethora of information from the internet, buyers often times know more about a product or service than the salesperson be asked to call upon them. There has been a premium placed on providing valuable information to sales professionals in a timely manner. World Class Organizations trying to sell goods and services have not stood still as these changing and evolving market conditions have impacted their business models. Companies around the globe have turned to consultants, key opinion leaders and subject matter experts to help them understand how to develop sales teams that are effective in this type of business climate. Sales force effectiveness has become a hot issue and businesses from every industry and part of the globe are spending a lot of time and dollars searching for the right approach to improving sales performance. One of the critical success factors to improving sales performance is re-investigating the need for sales training. The challenge to revamping sales training lies with the ability to assemble dynamic training content and then deliver it in a way that creates a measurable change in performance. Coupled with the content and deliver challenges is the opportunity cost for pulling sales teams out of the territories to deliver traditional “bricks and mortar” instructor led training. This type of instruction for years has been the backbone of corporate sales training around the globe. However, economic conditions have forced organizations to think of new and different approaches to delivering sales training. Sales leaders have turned to their HR counterparts to leverage the benefits and advantages of e-learning. HR teams have known for some time that e-learning is a cost effective and highly impactful approach to delivering training and education to employees. E-learning embraces the principles of “just in time, just for me” learning and development. E-learning can be a powerful tool for sales training but there remains one more barrier to learning – proximity of the sales team to the learning environment. In the e-learning environment for all other employees, the delivery of training and education is more straightforward than for sales teams. The reason for this is clear – other employees are “in the building” and sales teams are “in the field”. This is where sales leaders have taken another chapter out of the HR team’s playbook – the leveraging of learning management technology to deliver sales training. Sales teams have joined the ranks of their fellow employees in accessing their training and education through learning management systems. What has been labeled a part of “extended enterprise learning”; sales training has become a rapidly growing application for learning management systems. Leveraging the capabilities of an LMS for sales training is a logical and practical solution to bricks and mortar instructor led training. If you are interested in exploring the ability to leverage your learning management system for sales training you need to consider the following: Does your system support mobile learning? Can your system be accessed easily from individuals outside your firewall? Will your system support the development and delivery of sales training oriented learning material (e.g., video or voice over PowerPoint)? Will you be able to track a sales person’s learning progress and report their progress based on the current configurations of your system? Can your system support offline learning? Does your system support an easy and straightforward way to repurposing learning content? How does your system support social and collaborative learning? These are just some of the questions that need to be asked in order to evaluate whether or not your system will support sales training effectively and efficiently. It may be time for you to re-engage your learning management system provider and learn more. A more productive sales team may be just around the corner for you. Two notable sales training providers that have embraced the concept of sales training and learning management systems working together are Richardson and Holden International . These companies clearly understand the connection to enterprise learning and sales training. In our 2011 Gold Case Study our members can learn about the results seen from SunTrust’s sales and talent development program. As far as LMS providers, there are a good number of providers that position themselves as supporting sales training with their technology platforms. Blackboard , Kenexa , Certpoint , Firmwater , and Knoodle are just a few of these providers. To learn more about these providers or how sales training can be supported by your LMS, please contact us at success@brandonhall.com . 0 Comments Click here to read/write comments Tags: sales training , learning management systems , sales , mobile learning Powering through Election Inertia Posted on Thu, Oct 11, 2012 @ 4:01 PM Tweet On my commute to the office this morning I received a call from another “master” seller – this is why I love pre-election season! While there is an air of wait-and-see inertia for some of corporate America, the best sellers are using this time to their advantage. Are you? I’ve had national sales teams in my office this week working on “fox” hunting and intelligence gathering in their major accounts. There is a sense of urgency that is contagious among the best sellers. Do you know how the outcome of the election impacts your customers and your customer’s customers? If you find yourself in a holding pattern for even 30 minutes, use it to prepare for post-election productivity. Regardless of the election outcome, influence and authority in your accounts will change with the election. Once the certainty, either way, takes hold – the sellers who know how the election impacts their customers and their customer’s customers will lead Q4 and FY2013. Check out p. 75 of the New Power Base Selling for six customer research activities you can do in 30 minutes right now and what to look for: executives, biographies, social media profiles, public presentations, news releases and the chairman’s letter. Don’t let anything get in your way! -Ryan Kubacki, President 0 Comments Click here to read/write comments Tags: election inertia , election season , productivity , customer researchelection season productivity , election impact , election The New Power Base Selling named #1 Best Selling Business Book Posted on Thu, Jul 12, 2012 @ 10:06 AM Tweet The New Power Base Selling has been named the #1 Best Selling business book by the premier distributor, 800 CEO Read. Check out The New Power Base Selling and other bestselling business books at: http://800ceoread.com/attribute/show/1-The_Business_Book_Bestseller_List/ 0 Comments Click here to read/write comments Tags: 800ceoread , new power base selling , best business book Visit us at Selling Power's Sales 2.0 Conference! Posted on Mon, Jul 09, 2012 @ 9:53 AM Tweet Join Holden International and Selling Power Magazine at the Sales 2.0 Conference in Boston on July 23rd. As a platinum sponsor, Holden will be hosting a breakout session: " Sales Management: Using Science to Coach a Competitive Deal Review" Drawing from the new book, The New Power Base Selling: Lessons from 28,000 Sel...