How to Choose a Sales Training Partner

Choosing your sales training consultant smartly will make the difference between finding a partner for the long term or having to be back in the market again too soon; perhaps wiser, but at the cost of an opportunity lost. Instead, you want to select a sales consulting firm that matches up well with your company and its culture.

Needs Match

First, think about whether your sales force needs help in:

• Furthering their understanding of what they are selling:
  products and services
• Identifying the right targets to be calling on: at the industry level, the organizational level and the decision-making levels, and building
  a strategy for reaching these targets
• Improving  communications skills in conducting face to face sales meetings

Regardless of how you define your need, a key criterion is how well the training firms being considered work to understand your needs. Are they hearing you? Are they willing to tell you that they may not be the best choice if your needs move you in a different direction from their specialty? Are they demonstrating all the behaviors and beliefs that their approach espouses?

Values Match

Be sure you’ve got a good match between your values as a sales organization and the values that underlie the professional sales training you’re considering. If you believe that a consultative approach to selling fits your service or product, be sure that value is mirrored in your choice of training partner. If your sales strategy is based on building long-term relationships with your customers, inquire about how the training partner builds and maintains long-term relationships with its customers. If you believe in taking the right steps to ensure that senior management reinforces the training being considered, assess whether the training consultant can support you in this effort.

Culture Match

Can you describe your organization’s culture? Not only the official one established by your senior management and communicated through the Vision and Mission Statements and the list of Core Values, but the informal culture operating within the extant work force. It’s important that the external partners you select work closely with you and your team to understand both versions of your corporate culture if they are to be successful in helping you achieve the desired outcomes of your sales training investment.

Contact CRC Today

Contact CRC via the website or call us at (203) 899-0500 today for a professional consultation.  Custom sales training design, Train the Trainer programs, b2b consulting and business skills training. Serving New York, Connecticut, and the Nation.