Disclaimer:  Working closely with a company that does sales messaging (Force Management) influences my bias to the importance of this area.

When I was at OnTarget/Siebel Systems I worked for an executive, Nick Nascone, who was fond of talking about Big Animal Pictures¹.  Big Animal Pictures in the training world are the graphics that you use to talk about your business – and can be represented on a Powerpoint slide or hand drawn on a whiteboard, flip chart or napkin.

I believe all firms need Big Animal Pictures that are easy for your sales team to remember and articulate – and that resonate with your customers.  You need one picture for “What we do” and another for “How we do it.”

Here is my main Big Animal Picture – what I call the Value Chain for Training and Consulting Firms.  Below are some examples from inside the sales training world:

• Miller Heiman and their Sales System
• Channel Enablers and their ChannelPro methodology
• Infomentis – what they do and how they do it
• Think Inc. and their Value Proposition
• Force Management and a real life napkin drawing
• Huthwaite and the SPIN Solution Suite
• Breakthrough Sales Performance showing how their approach differs from tradition
• KLA Group and their Curriculum

If you don’t have a Big Animal Picture yet here are some suggestions as you go about creating them

• “What we do”
  • Think about the areas you impact when you serve customers.
  • How do you ‘bucket’ or group your solutions in a typical presentation or conversation

• “How we do it”
  • How do you implement your solutions – is there a process or methodology you follow for implementation or change adoption?
  • How are you different from your nearest competitors?

• Other questions to ask yourself
  • Can my salespeople easily articulate this with a pen and a blank piece of paper?
  • Is this clear enough that my current customers would agree this “sounds like you”?
  • Does this look identical to how your competitors describe themselves?

Get outside advice on your Big Animal Pictures and investigate how others describe themselves – in the training world and in your customer base.  Feel free to contact me if you’d like me to give you input on your ideas.

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¹ The original Big Animal Picture book was published in 1903 and contained big color pictures of cats, dogs and cows.  We haven’t made much progress in 100 years.

If your product fits the management consulting / professional services market (where sales training firms fall), then there is really no excuse for you and your entire firm to not be using your own methodologies.

That said, I have been astounded, perplexed, and mind-boggled for years that so many sales training salespeople don’t completely use the “stuff” they are selling.

Now I am not saying that if you have a “Whiz Bang Opportunity Planner” (the Whiz Banger) form as part of your Whiz Bang v. 13 Opportunity Management class that your salespeople need to complete one for every sale – you should be just like your clients, and I assume that means salespeople complete the Whiz Banger form for only the most complex deals, but mentally use the Whiz Bang processes on all deals.

What I am saying is that if your sales rep is selling the Whiz Bang training to XYZ Corp., it might be nice if the sales rep is demonstrating his use of the Whiz Banging principles.

For example, if Whiz Bang teaches people to focus on understanding customers before doing a product dump and talking about discounting options, then that sales rep might have some credibility issues when doing the opposite while standing in front of XYZ’s Vice President of Sales.

I’ve seen this repeatedly over the years, and I’ve also seen sales management not reinforce or coach their Whiz Bang methodologies either.

Why Not!?

The nature of the sales training industries – often small firms using independent contractors as sales reps – is a factor, however it is primarily happening for the same reason that it happens in your clients.  Change is hard and firms are not managing their own internal implementation of their methodologies as they tell their clients to.

My advice is to either treat your own firm as your potential #1 reference client or to go back to the “normal” corporate world where mediocrity is often more acceptable.

On a more practical level that means setting expectations early – in your interviews, and even before in your job ads – that salespeople in your firm need to be walking “best practice” examples of what they are selling.  I have found that you can’t really be that person until you have the methods “in your gut,” so you should be looking for ways to help your salespeople drink your Kool-Aid®.  Assigning a “methodology mentor” would be a good start.  I think the term “Jedi Master” has been taken, but that’s the idea…

As with any set of changes your focus needs to be on convincing all of your employees that the consequences of not changing (ie BAU – business as usual) is worse than the consequence of changing (ie using your Whiz Bang methodology) … or using the carrot rather than the stick you can focus on the benefits of adopting the Whiz Bang way of life.

Why Sales Training 2.0?

You might be thinking … another XYZ 2.0 thing … hmm, is this another Web 2.0 blog, or maybe something else about Sales 2.0?

Um, well, er, no.  Actually the 2.0 in the name is all about marketing!

A blog called “Blog for Sales Training Firms” sounded dumb, even for me.  Now I’m sure I’ll touch on some Web 2.0 concepts, but the general idea for this blog is discussing topics related to how to upgrade your sales training firm to the next level.  Sometimes that will mean posts directed at owners and CEOs of firms, sometimes it will be topics targeted to the sales reps … and sometimes it will be something really only interesting to the sales ops team.

Now some of you might be thinking “hey, we’re already a pretty advanced training firm … we’ve been in business 5 years and have a few $Million in revenue … we’re way past Sales Training 2.0 … heck we’re probably at least version 9.1.0.”

I think you will still find valuable content in this blog, but you will probably also agree that salestraining911.com might convey something completely different!   That is why I am now welcoming you to salestraining20.com (also reachable at www.salestraining2.com) … a blog intended for sales training firm owners, employees and contractors.