As part of my own frustration as a past VP National Sales and now as CEO of a negotiation training firm we recently studied what drives real adoption of sales training. Working with Gerhard Gschwandter of Selling Power magazine we reached out to 30,000 sales executives to find out what works. We found 150 companies who said they “deeply embedded their sales training into the DNA of their organization”. The top three reasons they felt true adoption ocurred shouldn’t be a suprise to you, in fact, Donal just pointed to one in a recent post.

1. The training initiaitve was tied directly to a larger corporate strategy such as margin growth, new product intro etc.

2. Strong executive sponsorship (largely driven by #1 above). Executive sponsorship didn’t mean writing a memo and releasing funds, it meant executives at the senior level being able to provide evidence of their proficiency in the new process.

3. Coaches who measure and are measured (largely driven by #2 above). Coaches and their direct reports had formal performance appraisal measurements tied to effective use of the new process.

We also talked to companies who invested in sales training and didn’t see it “stick”. We asked them why they thought this happened and in addition to validating the above three key drivers (by saying they didn’t tie to strategy or have sponsorship or coaching) they told us that there are many competing priorities for sales managers and sales people’s time, they listed:

• budgeting
• internal meetings 
• forecasting
• distributed leadership (each region doing what they wanted)
• no central budget (an RM could cxl her training investment to make P&L numbers)

What really drives us crazy is wondering why anyone who wants a true sales culture would put internal reporting ahead of the account management, opportunity management and negotiation skills of their coaches and salespeople? Could there be anything more important for a VP or RM to do than coach their people on account, opportunity or negotiation strategy? Aren’t these all the leading indicators of success?

We believe part of the root cause here is that sales training shouldn’t be lumped in with all other training. The way we manage accounts and opportunities is such a big part of our brand image in the market and as important it is the main engine for growth strategy. The methods our sales team use to sell can no longer be optional, they need to be thought of as internal core competencies and as part of the brand.