The TAS Group issued a press release earlier in the week highlighting their leadership position in the recently published ESR Sales Training Vendor Guide, Third Edition. We congratulate Donal and his team for their significant progress during 2008.
You might be interested in a number of sales training industry findings from ESR’s research during 2008 and early 2009.
- As much as fifteen percent of sales training delivered in 2008 is having a lasting impact of more than 90 days, up from only 10 percent in 2006 and 2007. That’s good news. One reason is that more companies are understanding the importance of building and using sales methodologies.
- Corporate investments in sales training will be down at least 20 percent in 2009. Depending on the economy, that could quickly grow to 40 percent or more. Traditional live, on-site, classroom training will be off 60% or more, due mainly to travel expense limitations. To counter this we see a an increase in deployments of distance-learning and other virtual solutions.
- Numbers of the leading sales training companies have significantly downsized as a result of that lowered demand. Research and development are being impacted, which might hurt those companies and the industry for years to come.
- The increasing diversity among sales teams is a challenge for some sales training companies. Generational, cultural, learning, and experiential differences prevent the traditional one-size-fits-all approach from offering significant performance improvement.
- Eighty-percent of companies we spoke with across multiple industries do not perform an objective, comprehensive needs analysis when evaluating and selecting a sales training company. The two most prevalent methods employed are choosing a training partner by name recognition or selecting a firm based upon a past engagement with that vendor, regardless of the results.
- When cost cutting, ESR found that corporations most often eliminate coaching programs from training budgets. This is a big, big mistake. Learning reinforcement through coaching is a critical success factor for any strategic sales training initiative.
- Having the wrong salespeople in sales jobs continues to be a big problem into 2009. ESR estimates that in “sales-challenged” companies as many as 25 to 33% of salespeople don’t have the skills and personal traits to succeed. All the training, tools, support and coaching won’t help a rep who doesn’t have the basic traits required to sell.
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