What Is Happening???

With advances in technologies that help a sales organization build intelligence, facilitate strategies, assess human characteristics during hiring, bridging customer gaps, analyze buyer trends and behaviors, it should be a breeze that salespeople at least touch the sales finishing quota lines more frequently than ever. But it is.....?

Research data from MHI Global indicates the average trend of a sales person making quota is actually moving downwards for the last 5 years, from 63% in 2011 to a consistent down spiral of 57.1% in 2015.

Why is that so?

There could be many factors attributing to this. We have taken the effort to bring out some of them in the following :

DIGITAL WAVE

While we ride on the trend of social and digital selling, many organizations are struggling to transform their sales force to be digital-ready. There is still a large ocean of outdoor / customer-facing sales who are still very entrenched in engaging customers face-to-face and are not equipped with the digital skills to engage potential buyers earlier in the sales process.

And this is a real threat to many businesses. Studies have shown that in the next few short years, the demand for most sales roles (from order takers, facilitators and the common sales person), will drop from 15% - 30%. However, the requirement for consultants and inside sales will see an increase of at least 10% - 20%.

ACQUISITIONS Smaller and medium-sized organizations are combining forces to become greater forces in the market in order to be competitive. With mergers and acquisitions, comes bigger workforce and often a more complex purchasing process. The people who are tasked to manage the purchasing cycle are also more professional and skilled.

A sales person not equipped with the latest skills, other than just people-relationship skill, will find it harder to engage, convince and sell their solution offerings.

RELIANCE ON VENDORS

The L&D (Learning & Development) industry has seen a marked increase in demand over the recent years and this same demand seems to be ever going uptrend. However, many small and mid-sized organisations are still seeing training as a cost center.

Additionally, many of them are heavily relying on their vendors to bring them the much required training.

Relying on vendors for training is not a bad thing. On a flip side, many such training are either product driven, or a soft skill training largely with a fix course content. They are not necessarily tailored to each company'es business objectives, gaps and current situation.

WRONG PERCEPTION OF TRAINING

Two of the most common myths about training are :

- people will improve upon training ;

- it is a cost center.

At times, the sales force do not need any training. They may actually require motivation instead. It is often very easy for a manager to send their sales force for a training, and expect them to come back as rock stars.

Sales who attended training will not be rock stars if :

1) they do not have the open mindset to learn ;

2) they actually need motivation, not training ;

3) do not apply the new skills which is imparted onto them ;

4) they are not guided by their managers after the training ;

5) if the training done does not catered to their skills gap ;

6) there are no agreed metrics that are agreed upon between them and their managers.

Also, training will always be a cost center if there have never been an intentional effort to determine if the issue is a motivational issue, or a soft skills gap with a set of measurable results, couple with after class guidance.

"training will always be a cost center if there have never been an intentional effort to determine if the issue is a motivational issue, or a soft skills gap with a set of measurable results, couple with after class guidance."

The current game-changing situation is shaking up all businesses around the world. Unless we take a step back to re-look and re-tool, meeting sales quota will become ever more challenging.

---

Cherrypick Consulting customizes training contents through a discovery session with our customers. We understand that every organisation and individuals have different gaps and different needs. It is through this conversation that we design relevant contents that brings results for our customers.

We would love to hear from you about your thoughts on today's article. Drop us a comment or give us a pad on the back if you find the above article relevant.

Cherry-O!

#Awareness