(CLP) Programs

Appleton Greene corporate training programs are all process-driven. They are used as vehicles to implement tangible business processes within clients’ organizations, together with training, support and facilitation during the use of these processes. Corporate training programs are therefore implemented over a sustainable period of time, that is to say, between 1 year (incorporating 12 monthly workshops), and 4 years (incorporating 48 monthly workshops). Your program information guide will specify how long each program takes to complete. Each monthly workshop takes 6 hours to implement and can be undertaken either on the client’s premises, an Appleton Greene serviced office, or online via the internet. This enables clients to implement each part of their business process, before moving onto the next stage of the program and enables employees to plan their study time around their current work commitments. The result is far greater program benefit, over a more sustainable period of time and a significantly improved return on investment.

Appleton Greene uses standard and bespoke corporate training programs as vessels to transfer business process improvement knowledge into the heart of our clients’ organizations. Each individual program focuses upon the implementation of a specific business process, which enables clients to easily quantify their return on investment. There are hundreds of established Appleton Greene corporate training products now available to clients within customer services, e-business, finance, globalization, human resources, information technology, legal, management, marketing and production. It does not matter whether a client’s employees are located within one office, or an unlimited number of international offices, we can still bring them together to learn and implement specific business processes collectively. Our approach to global localization enables us to provide clients with a truly international service with that all important personal touch. Appleton Greene corporate training programs can be provided virtually or locally and they are all unique in that they individually focus upon a specific business function. All (CLP) programs are implemented over a sustainable period of time, usually between 1-4 years, incorporating 12-48 monthly workshops and professional support is consistently provided during this time by qualified learning providers and where appropriate, by Accredited Consultants.

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Executive summary

Optimizing Sales

Addressing and reviewing revenue processes to Optimize Sales is a valuable exercise regardless of the current state of sales results in your organization.

Over the last 15+ years, the sales profession has undergone its most dramatic changes in decades. The emergence of new technologies in Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Sales Performance Management (SPM) have provided automated tools to help streamline sales processes and reduce errors in commission payments. These tools have also made more information than ever available at the fingertips of both individual contributor and sales leadership roles. The Internet has changed the power relationship in B2B sales by transferring the position of strength from the solution provider to the client/prospect.

Some of these changes have driven significant improvements in the ability to track progress against sales goals and objectives while ensuring all stakeholders have access to critical information. The advent of ever more detailed and complex CRM solutions and SPM solutions have automated many of the manual tasks associated with B2B sales.

Traditionally, commodity sales (photocopiers, life insurance, etc.) were viewed as very transactional and #’s driven. In this model salespeople were incentivized to make as many calls as possible to drive increases in sales. B2B sales like computer systems and software were viewed as more complex and more relationship oriented. The goal was to build a relationship that ensured the salesperson had the opportunity to learn about the client’s business while also providing the client with an ability to learn about different solutions in the marketplace.

The traditional relationship selling model was centered around, lunches, dinners, events and golf to “get to know each other” and determine if there was a level of trust to work together. This worked well in a world where prospects needed to meet with solution providers to understand their solutions and how they may meet their needs. In this historical environment, purchasing decisions were made by individuals and/or small teams that you worked closely with to secure their business.

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It was difficult for prospects to learn about potential solutions unless they went to Trade Shows or engaged in exploratory conversations with potential suppliers before the advent of the Internet. In this scenario salespeople had a captive audience of organizations and individuals that wanted to meet with them. Senior Executives even answered their phone, or you could connect with an Executive Assistant and build rapport before they would let you speak to their boss.

Salespeople would target their organization’s Ideal Client Profile (ICP) prospects and then reach out to key decision makers to connect and set up a Discovery Meeting.

Salespeople had great autonomy over their schedules. With no CRM to fill out they held all the knowledge about the client/prospect and their specific needs in their files. They would share it with the support team and deliver a typed-up forecast or print off a spreadsheet with deal details, $ amounts and dates to be rolled up into a team, region, division sales funnel and forecast.

Salespeople had a sense of control over their schedule and many gravitated to the role because of the ability to “be on the road” and responsible for your own schedule and ultimately your sales results.

A strict and inflexible use of new tools and associated data has in some instances reduced the oversight of sales to the equivalent of a mathematical formula. This approach removes the human element and accentuates the belief that sales success is purely a #’s game. The belief is that by doing more cold email outreach, more cold calling, etc., you will be able to deliver ever greater pipeline opportunities and ultimately increase sales. Although these approaches may have delivered incremental gains to early adopters, the market has tuned out to excessive “spam” type outreach by B2B sales organizations.

Ultimately, sales success in B2B sales is about weaving new technologies and strategies into a foundation of personalization that delivers impact. The best salespeople spend more time thinking critically and strategically to differentiate themselves and their organization they represent. It is about quality over quantity.

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Although many sales leaders have relied heavily on their dashboards to understand their business, the very best insights are captured when working in the field shoulder to shoulder with team members. There is no technology that can replace the value of meeting people in person to build rapport and understand how each may assist each other to mutual benefit. Zoom meetings were a necessary requirement when navigating the Pandemic and allowed much of the business world to continue without the need for in person meeting. Video conferencing can still play an important role in the future of B2B sales but only when supported with strong personal relationships and working partnerships between solution suppliers, partners and potential clients.

Sales compensation has become ever more complicated. The chatter amongst salespeople is that they often cannot figure out how much they should get paid when closing a transaction. We have all seen the devastating negative impact on a sales organization when the goal posts for sales success are moved and the resulting broken trust between the organization and their sales team. Trust takes a long time to build but can be broken instantly and is extremely difficult to repair.

The best sales compensation plans allow a sales rep to determine how much they would make after leaving a good sales call. Salespeople are coin operated, and income is a significant motivator. If you are not using this lever to drive engagement and focus you are not using compensation to your benefit as an organization. The concept that “salespeople make too much money” is like a cancer when it creeps into an organization. It can spread quickly and undermine how other operational areas view sales, and ultimately drive down morale and motivation on the sales team.

Further complicating the sales landscape today is that decisions are now often driven by an ever-increasing group of people assigned to explore solutions and make recommendations. Purchasing groups are playing a much more active and assertive role in the procurement process making the selling process ever more complex.

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The future of B2B sales will need to continue to evolve for those who want to excel moving forward. A hybrid model is emerging, taking the best of both the new technologies that are available but also not walking away from historical aspects of sales strategy that have been proven to deliver results consistently. Unfortunately, many sales organizations have taken their eye off the ball when it comes to sales fundamentals. All the focus has been on entering vast amounts of data by front line salespeople, managing dashboards by sales management to make sense of the volume of information collected and generating enormous spam like sales outreach campaigns.

Despite all the new technologies available to assist sales organizations we continue to see a steep decline in sales success.

A Salesforce study in November 2023 found that “only 28% of sales professionals expected to hit quota in 2023.”

The Salesforce study is backed up by independent research by RepVue that found that “tech sales professionals making quota declined from 53% in Q1 2022 to 42.8% in Q3 2023.”

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There is no silver bullet that will reverse this trend. An understanding of the issues undermining the foundation of a successful sales organization is a great place to start. Ask yourself the following questions.

The place to start is to better understand if you are hiring the right people into the right sales roles and then are you onboarding them effectively? Without hi