OUR SERVICES — Success Story #1
Sales Training Trumps Economic Slowdown
In a period when overall sales were down, our customer — a division of a Fortune 500 company — undertook two sales training programs. Executives thought that there was no positive Return On Investment (ROI) from the training, since sales showed no increase after the training. What impact did those training programs really have on sales metrics?
ROI Results:
Our analysis showed that, in fact, there was a significant positive ROI: every $1 invested in the training programs returned more than $35 in increased sales. In that difficult economic climate, sales would have been much lower without the training.
By isolating the effect of training from other factors, we showed that the sales performance of those who did not participate in the training declined sharply — obscuring the true ROI for this valuable initiative.
Optimization Results:
Comparing performance data before and after the training, the analysis illustrated that low performers benefited the most from the training. High performers and mid-range performers may benefit more from different training programs targeted to their needs.
We also analyzed which groups of sales reps benefited most from the two training programs. The first program’s benefits varied according to the participants’ manager ratings and psychological profiling, but benefits from the second training program were relatively equal across the groups. Lower achievers received a stronger benefit from the first training; growth promoters showed slightly more benefit from the second program.
Our analysis also revealed that there was a “diminishing return” effect from deploying the two trainings together.
See the Difference!
Watch the sales figures in the illustration below. Sales reps who did not participate in the training (purple line) encountered rough sailing as the economy contracted. By contrast, the trained salespeople (yellow line), who had seen an immediate improvement in their performance after the training, were able to maintain that high performance level in spite of the struggling economy.
The results demonstrated that a sales training program was a valuable investment. While performance of the untrained sales force took a substantial dive during an economic downturn, trained salespeople maintained a high level of performance.