Goals & Objectives

Deakon believe, to be effective, a sales training programme needs to help companies achieve the following four (4) goals & objectives:

1. Increase productivity and profits

The sales team’s primary role is to deliver results and the best way to do this is to enhance their NEW Business Development & Closing skills.

2. Enhance customer loyalty

Your product, service or solution can be best in the market but without excellent customer relations, your long-term prospects are weak.

3. Decrease staff turnover

If you recruit good people and provide ongoing personal development, they will be productive and loyal; invest money where it will have the greatest impact.

4. Improve self-managed within the sales team

A well trained sales team works from an ingrained sense of focus and purpose, requiring less management.

Leadership

The strongest sales teams all seem to have one element in common; they have the full support and personal commitment of the senior management team to provide them with professional training and in-house support. They don’t view sales training as an expense but as an investment in their staff and the company’s long term future.

According to the results from a recent American Society for Training and Development survey, making sure that employee learning is having an impact on business results is at the forefront of many Senior Executives’ & Sales Managers minds.

When asked to pick their top three most-pressing issues in relation to training, 67% said that establishing a link between learning and organizational performance was number one. 53% said developing the employee skills needed to drive corporate initiatives is also a top concern, while 49% said they need to establish a return on investment for training initiatives.

Source: American Society for Training and Development
IBM survey of 174 executives (Oct. 2005)

What these survey results indicate is that companies need and want to ensure that employee learning is having a direct impact on business results. It has often been said that you can manage assets but you have to lead people, this is especially true with the salesforce.

Measurement

Sales training is one of the most difficult areas to measure when it comes to estimating the projected return on investment. To help Senior Executives & Sales Managers estimate the Return on Investment (ROI) for investing in Sales Training, Deakon have created a simple ROI Calculator that provides a guideline for the time to achieve a return on your investment.

The following example is based on a small sales team of three (3), each with an average sale value of $1.5 Mil PA, Gross Margin of 15% and Sales Cycle Length of three months.

By increasing the Average Sale Value Per Salesperson & Gross Margin by only 15% & 5% respectively, the Gross Profit is increased by 33% resulting in a net gain of $174,750.00.

Based on this example, the initial ROI is achieved in 3½ months.