Now is the time of year that senior level staff is sitting down to identify the goals and ultimately the budget for 2017.
When you outline the organization’s sales goals, what would be the budget required to meet those goals? Start with the end in mind to help calculate the investment for each goal. What is the cost of NOT achieving those goals? After identifying that cost and assuming you want a 5X return, what incremental dollars would you need to have in the budget?
If any of your annual goals include the following, you may want to consider setting aside budget for your sales team:
• Headcount or reduction in force
• Increased sales revenue over last year
• Reduce the number of bad hires
• Shorten sales cycles
• Decrease expenses around RFPs and presentations
• Determine pipeline revenue versus sales closing forecasted
What are your options?
• Motivational Seminar. Who doesn’t enjoy a good pep rally at the company sales meeting? Of course rallying the troops has value. The Rah-Rah only lasts about 3 weeks and then it is back to business as usual. These are great for getting the team energized for a productive meeting.
How Much Is That? Daily rates of keynotes can range from $5000 to upwards of $20,000+ depending upon the experience and celebrity status of the speaker. If you’ve had success with a motivational speaker solving 1 or more of the above sales goals – keep doing it – and share your experience with us, we’d like to know! Motivational speakers get the team fired up…and sometimes that’s all that’s needed to hit your goals. In other situations, getting the team fired up with a motivational speaker isn’t enough… it’s a short-term fix with a low ROI (return on investment).
• Public Sales Boot Camps, Master Classes, or Conferences oftentimes offer a crash course of compelling content. Participants are very energized with new information to implement yet have trouble retaining everything but the key takeaways. Retrieving the information later or reinforcement of the behaviors around implementing the material is on the participant or the manager. If you have a culture of “accountability” where the majority of folks do what they say they’re going to do – then this may be a viable option for you with a high ROI. If you already have challenges with holding the team accountable for performing at a higher level, then you’ll want to consider another option.
How Much Is That? Rates are typically by the seat/participant and can average around $2000 or more. Event only programs are great for crash course learning of content or an introduction of new and seemingly relevant principles.
• Online Training seems to be very popular these days. The convenience allows for busy schedules and a remote sales team. The participants must be very focused and disciplined to apply the content learned in these self-paced environments. A drawback is that the burden of managing the participation is back on the sales manager or HR director.
How Much Is That? The prices for online courses may start at a few hundred dollars per person but vary depending upon number of courses and if materials and licensing fees are involved. This is the lowest cost option but requires a highly motivated and disciplined team to pull it off.
• Coaching programs provide not only guidance and tools for uncovering and fixing sales and management challenges but also offer reinforcement for the behavioral changes that are identified to fix those problems. The Coach assumes the responsibility of holding the employee(s) accountable and the manager focuses on the sales numbers. [Read: WHAT DO I NEED YOU FOR ANYHOW?]
How Much Is That? You will see a wide range for coaching programs and a wide range of coaching styles. The more individualized the coaching, the more expensive it might be. As with anything, there are good coaches and great coaches. Interview the coach. Do you see them as a “Trusted Advisor”…someone who is credible, reliable, with a low self-interest, and most importantly, someone you’d be comfortable working on the tough stuff.
There are many options out there….and it can be confusing if you don’t have a clear understanding of the root of the problem. Maybe we can help…we have a couple options that have worked well for our clients.
At Sandler Training we have a complimentary “discovery meeting” where we find out from our prospects the very sales challenges they would like to see fixed within the budget they have. If we can’t help them, we will be the ones to let them know that. If you need some guidance with discovering your best options, a Sandler Sales Coach, not a salesperson, will talk you through some considerations with no obligations. We are okay to discover that we many not be a fit – would you be okay with that?
We can cite all kinds of statistics and studies as to why a company should invest in our programs but candidly, our programs may not be the right ones for your organization needs.
Instead, we would rather you make the decision for yourself by using a free ROI calculator that allows you to use your own data points to determine what the best solutions are to achieve your sales goals.
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