16 Criteria for Selecting an Effective B2B Sales Training Provider
By Michael J Griffin
6-minute read
This blog gives you a “checklist” for selecting the right Sales Training Provider. It was originally developed by Brooks Group. I edited the key criteria and have added my key insights for each item to provide you with why each of these 16 criteria are important. There is one question you can ask each sales training provider for each of the criteria as well.
Look for a company that provides customized service. With the advent of desktop editing, all reputable sales training providers should be able to customize their sales training to your requirements. Basic customization should be for free but constructing custom role plays may have an investment. Questions: How do you customize your sales training to our industry, market and company? Can you provide examples of how you have done this for other clients?
Select a company that provides more than a motivational speech or one-time training event. Effective sales training is a process of learning and applying the skills taught. ELAvate employs a process called Assess – Train – Reinforce – Coach – Measure. Question: What process does your training company use to ensure effective and measurable skill use back on the job?
Pick a company that offers ongoing coaching and reinforcement systems. Just like learning to excel at a sport, you need a coach. Selling skills require sales managers to coach and reinforce selling skills in the marketplace. To purchase only selling skill training without a robust coaching process is a mistake. Can you excel in golf in a two-day workshop? No! Same goes for selling skills. Question: Please explain how we will coach & reinforce our sales team to use the selling skills back on the job?
Identify an organization that is flexible enough to deliver training in the format that is most conductive for your organization. Since Covid, successful sales organizations have flexible training and reinforcement formats and process that can cater to your organizational requirements. This may also include multiple language workshops, micro-learning, virtual sessions, and post-workshop coaching. Question: Besides face-to-face or Zoom workshops, how else can my salespeople learn and apply selling skills?
Select a company whose facilitators can demonstrate that they have hands-on sales experience and that they’ve successfully used the strategies that they teach. The sales trainer can make or break the success of sales training and the translation of the content and skills into real-life practice. Choose a sales trainer that has a successful sales record and most likely to adapt to your sales team culture. Question: Before we make a purchase decision, can I meet and interview the trainer you think best meets our requirements? Then be prepared with your interview questions!
Look for a provider that emphasizes value over cost. Rather than “cost” look at the decision to purchase sales training as an investment that creates an ROI in terms of increased revenue and other measurable KPI’s of success. Remember that a good ROI of sales training will involve a firm that supports sales coaching and measures after the workshop has been completed. This may involve a coaching and or consulting investment as well. Question: How can your firm collaborate with ours to provide a good return on this investment?
Don’t be too fast to limit yourself only to “industry-specific” training firms. No one training company or trainer has experience across all industries. If you have identified a sales training firm and trainer, then ask the provider to have their trainer do a series of field visits with experienced salespeople meeting real customers. Our trainers normally do this for about 3-6 observations and provide a summary of the observations to the client. Using trainers outside your industry may also bring added value in terms of sales process and new ideas for sales success. Question: Will your firm provide at no extra charge selling skill observations across 4 to 6 sales meetings with our salespeople?
Select an organization that has demonstrated servant leadership. Research has shown that basic B2B selling skills haven’t changed much over the past 20 years. What has changed is there are a lot of hungry or starving sales training providers! You want to select a training provider who puts your sales success first and goes the extra mile/km to serve you to meet your company’s needs and requirements. Question for you: As you meet with sales training consultants, who is demonstrating expert skill with the attitude to serve me and my company for training success?
Be sure to engage a company that can also teach sales manager and executives how to manage and coach. This has been elaborated earlier: Selling skills training without a robust sales coaching and reinforcement process is a waste of money. You may want to evaluate the ability of your sales managers’ coaching skills and activity to determine how this will affect your sales training investment. If your sales training requirements are large, you may want to consider a “Train the Sales Trainer” model for select experienced sales managers to be your company internal trainers. Questions: How can you help me assess the coaching ability of our sales managers to maximize our sales training investments? Do you offer a train-the-sales trainer option for large, regional, or global implementations?
Sales training is effective focuses on skills, behaviors, and attitudes. Your sales training should not only improve selling skills and behaviors but the salespeople’s attitudes of service, resilience, and achievement. Question: How does your sales training model positively impact salespeople’s attitudes? Make sure they give examples or proof!
Select a company whose culture of selling is consistent with yours and that of your organization. Make sure the sales account executive, the sales trainer, and the training organization is aligned with your company values and leadership. Visit the provider website and conduct an initial audit of their culture. Questions: Did you visit our company website? What did you find insightful? How do your corporate values and culture align with ours?
Select a company that consistently updates, and revises its offerings. I used to work for a sales training company that seemed to only update their sales training every 10 to 12 years! Work with a training company that can offer insight and proof on how its training workshops and processes are adapted to local, country, and market changes. Question: How have you updated and adapted your sales training post-Covid?
Work with a company that offers references. Ask for references on the sales training provider’s performance, attitude, and how they helped the reference’s sales success. Question: Can you provide me with a sales director-level reference who I may call to get feedback on your sales training?
Select a provider that has had experience rolling out programs that are similar in size, scope, and breadth to the one you are seeking. In multicultural Asia, this might be important when your company wants to create and sustain a consistent sales enablement culture across nations and ethnic groups. Select a training provider that can offer regional rollouts in a variety of languages with local trainers. Question: Tell me about your company’s experience in conducting sales training across Asia.
Select a company that is willing to conduct a pilot program to determine the effectiveness of the sales training & process for your sales force and the willingness to adapt it after the pilot. Pilots are normally done for larger implementations. If your training is for a smaller team, the “pilot” could be attending a public sales training workshop. Question: Since our sales training involves multiple teams across countries, how may we collaborate to conduct a pilot before an Asian-wide roll out?
Select a sales training provider where the account executive models the selling skills and servant attitude you want in your salespeople. The account executive from the sales training provider must “walk the selling skills talk.” He or she should be a “proof source” of the skills and attitude you want in your salespeople. Question: How long have you been with this sales training provider? Tell me about your journey as a successful salesperson.
Here are the 16 criteria to support your success in selecting an effective Sales Training Provider. ELAvate Sales Training has consistently met these 16 criteria for over 30 years across 19 nations in the Asia Pacific region. Contact me at michael.griffin@elavateglobal.com to explore how ELAvate can serve you in to keep your sales team successful and competitive!
Michael J Griffin
ELAvate Founder and CEO
Global B2B Sales Consultant