Corporate Sales and Service Academy

WHAT IS A CORPORATE SALES ACADEMY?

A Corporate Sales Academy is your own company branded sales improvement structure which provides a framework for the development of excellence of your total sales force.

Your company branded Sales Academy will become a sustainable and developmental program in which all sales training, sales management training, knowledge management, e-learning and performance management are contained.

No more ad hoc, no follow-through and inefficient sales people development!!

Click here to view an example of a Corporate Sales Academy Curriculum

The reason why corporate sales academies have been developed is because:-

	Many organisations do not have a learning and development department and so any training of their people is done in an ad hoc way, particularly sales training. Often sales training comes about because a need arises such as - losing market share, new products to launch, growth requirements, a need to upskill, salesperson turnover or the increasing cost of buying talent. Often the training is ineffective, unsupported and non-customised. If a Learning and Development group does exist in the business then we partner with them to develop the Academy.
	Many sales organisations don’t train their people at all, they tend to assume that they hire experienced sales people who are already trained. This view is very risky. There is a big difference between what a sales person will say they can do in a job interview – and what they actually can do! One example from our experience is an Australian-wide well known company that had 30 salespeople across five state branches. When a real-time selling skills assessment was done of each of these 30 salespeople only five of them had reasonably good selling skills. 83% of the sales force couldn’t sell very well – they were professional visitors! What do we mean by selling! Many of these 25 sales people were making budgets and quotas but their targets were too soft and were ‘dumbed down’. In real terms they were costing the company money - rather than selling, negotiating and adding value - because: a. they couldn’t articulate the company’s value proposition b. they couldn’t clearly identify the customer’s and prospect’s real needs – basic skills such as questioning and listening were sadly lacking c. they couldn’t negotiate and hold on to the margin and premium built in to the company’s added value offerings, so in all cases they could only sell on the basis of price and features. This meant that they either couldn’t win the business or they sold it too cheaply! Most salespeople if they have not been trained properly, don’t even pay back their total cost of employment to the organisation that is employing them – salary, super, car costs, sick/holiday leave and additional on-costs. There are many sales people who have not been trained professionally who are costing their companies lots of money and lots of growth opportunities.
	Most Sales Managers have also not been trained professionally. In most instances they were promoted to Sales Manager because they were a very good sales person. But the work of a Sales Manager is massively different to the work of a sales person. A Sales Manager must lead and manage his/her sales team - not make sales calls or sit in offices. Many sales managers don’t manage their salespeople well and it is evident as: a. they can’t hire properly – high turnover of sales people b. they don’t develop their people well - too many underperformers are tolerated c. they don’t know how to skill them and train them – the ramp up time is too long d. they don’t know how to motivate them and coach them – good people leave and true potential is not tapped Many Sales Managers also cost the business money because they don’t provide a greater return on the sum total of their own total cost of employment plus that of their sales team.

Conclusion

The major purpose for developing your Corporate Sales Academy is to significantly increase the profitability, performance and productivity of your sales organisation across sales management, key account management, field sales, telephone sales and retail sales.

The Role of Perform Solutions International Pty Ltd

Our approach is to form a medium to long term partnership with you. We look at the total skills, knowledge, systems and processes of sales people and sales management across the organisation and align these to the business objectives and strategic plans.

We create, with you, a development plan for the sales organisation that generally needs to take a minimum 2-3 years to develop the salespeople and sales managers to their required capability levels.

Over a 3-5 year period the longer term goal is to create the equivalent of a world class sales organisation in your markets, in your sales environment.

Who buys a corporate sales academy?

It is the MD or CEO who is going to see the value and be willing to invest in a Corporate Sales Academy.

National Sales Managers might alert the CEO of its potential and value.

HOW DO YOU GET STARTED?

The Key Success Factors for a successful Corporate Sales Academy are:

1. Strong commitment from the MD/CEO that this is important to the business strategically for the medium to long term.
   
   
2. The selection internally of a senior manager to the role of Dean of Students or Chief Learning Officer. This person commits to an eighteen months to two year role as
   
   
   1. Senior Manager to liaise with Perform Solutions International
      
      
   2. Coordinates senior managers, sales managers and sales people to roll out the training
      
      
   3. Assists PSI in customising the training to your needs and sales environment
      
      
   4. Lead project manager for the learning management system and knowledge capture in your company
      
      
   5. Head of the Corporate Sales Academy in your organisation and is responsible for the budget.
      
      
   6. Follows up all skills and process assessments to embed the changes in people and the business
      
      
   7. Responsibility for capturing and sharing results, wins and learnings
      
      
3. A third key success factor is that PSI involves all sales management from the beginning so they have input to what they need and want, and provide their acceptance and commitment. They identify key sales people who will be involved in developing the best practice information that is inputted into the sales academy courses.
   
   
4. The next step consists of best practice workshops with the top salespeople. The purpose of these workshops and interviews is to extract the key knowledge, the key ‘smarts’, the key processes, the key strategies, the key skills that exist in the minds and capabilities of the organisation’s top salespeople. These need to be extracted and understood so that they are incorporated into the sales development programme for sales staff and sales managers.
   
   
5. Then the development curriculum is created and presented to senior management for approval.
   
   
6. The program is rolled out. Induction programs and materials are developed, courses are developed and run, assessments are developed and results are recorded. Quarterly meetings are held to track progress and results.
   
   
7. It is critical that a Learning Management System is developed so that all of the training programs can be reinforced. It is also critical for the business for the longer term that specialist knowledge in the business is captured and able to be transferred.
   
   
8. In the latter 9-12 months of the first year of the programme, enough results have been recorded to identify the return on investment. All sales manager and salespeople are expected to identify in what ways the sales training and sales development is impacting positively on their business and helping them win additional business and retain existing accounts. These are recorded as testimonies to provide quantitative and qualitative evidence of the return on investment.
   
   
9. Next it is critical to create a 2-5 year Strategic Plan that provides the big picture view of the role of the Sales Academy in aligning with the business objectives to help the business go where it needs to go with a skilled sales force and effective sales systems and processes.