The Challenge:

Is your company's market share shrinking and your revenue targets getting harder and harder to achieve each year?

You are not alone. A competitive marketplace where more and more companies are entering the market selling similar products and services has raised customers' expectations for better value and exceptional service.

Customer Loyalty:
According to numerous studies on customer loyalty, the salesperson's effectiveness is the most crucial factor for a customer's choice of vendor, more so than price, quality or the ability to provide a total solution. In fact, customer loyalty adds more to the bottom-line than new business development. Raising retention rates by 5% can increase sales by 25-85%.

Internet Technology:
With the advent of internet technology, some critics believe that the salesperson's role is becoming obsolete. In fact, the opposite is true. Effective sales professionals and a personal approach to selling are actually becoming increasingly important. Internet technology has allowed salespeople to offload transactions that don't require their presence in order to focus on the more personal aspects of selling including understanding the client's business and providing more personalized service. Many companies have adopted this approach where transactional activities such as bill payments, and buying extra products and services (eg. headsets, ringtones, etc.) are conducted over the internet rather than face-to-face with customers.

Sales Training Reality:
With very few colleges or universities offering degrees in sales, companies are spending more on sales training and education than on all other business areas combined. Approximately 45% of corporate training dollars are spent on sales. However, the sales training provided by companies are often on sales skills considered entry-level such as the ability to answer objections, the skill to properly qualify prospects or the creation of effective sales presentations.
 
Often companies will invest in "solutions" that are far easier to buy or implement such as a motivational speaker, a new technology or an exciting incentive program in hopes of motivating the sales team as opposed to formulating and implementing an effective sales performance improvement program based on sales training needs with the help of an outside company.

Getting Results:
Companies that use both outside sales training vendors and measurable data such as average deal size and close ratio, enjoy significant increases in key performance metrics, over 40%. Learn how ShapeYourVision can help optimize your company's sales performance.
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