High Performance Sales | Blog

A couple of weeks ago, I was teaching a class in Business Case Selling to a high-tech client. Virtual is a tough setting for this topic because the length of time you can hold a seller’s attention on a webinar is shorter than what’s needed to teach it well.

We solve this by extending the training experience well outside the webinar itself. Pre-work, practicum assignments, manager coaching and the like. Several smaller pieces connected to build one compelling lesson.

Our client’s main objective with this training is to win without discounting, every sales leader’s dream.

To do this, their sellers have to prove, in empirical detail, the financial value of each high-tech solution to the customer. These sales are complex, lengthy, competitive and customers are known to start bidding wars to drive down price.

We have found that many sales training companies use the word “transformation” when they’re really only talking about tweaking the existing organization mostly through training, not holistic transformation. Depending on your case for change and the gap between your capabilities and desired results, rolling out sales training or a new tool might be the perfect solution.

Training could affect the change you need. Training could also prepare a sales force for an eventual transformation initiative or reinforce a transformation you have recently undergone. But training alone is not transformation.

The Sales Executive Council has found through their research that B2B sales people fall into one of five profiles – the Challenger, the Relationship Builder, the Reactive Problem Solver, the Hard Worker, and the Lone Wolf. Our experience tells us that while many top-performing sales people can display more than one of these behaviors, they do provide a quick shortcut to categorize sales professionals.

 The title of this post is from the best-selling author Jim Champy, who I heard speak at the Consulting Magazine conference last Thursday in New York City. Jim is a great storyteller and thinker – see our Top Performer piece to get a feel for his genius.

The SEC’s Challenger Sales research has generated a lot of discussion and in conversations w/ some colleagues and ex-colleagues in the sales effectiveness space the past couple of weeks, we have discussed how to build this type of skill across his team in a sustainable way, not just run another training event.