Delivering Value in a Tough Economy

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>> Hi, my name is Gill Hutchwan assumed spelling, and welcome to Selling Pod 2B assumed spelling. Today we have the pleasure of meeting with David DeStefano. He's the CEO of Richardson. How do you change business behavior?

>> Well in our world, changing behavior means you know, enterprise-wide sales training initiatives that generally take the shape of trying to improve skill of a sales force in an organization through a common set of skills and strategies and processes that are learned, and then reinforced you know, in the work force.

>> David, can you name the three best practice behaviors that sales people need today to survive in this tough economy?

>> Sure, absolutely. We're in an unprecedented time as far as my lifetime and many others, right? So that the skills that I think that sales people need to adapt to are they need to understand that as it relates to the Internet and the change in business, the change in the way selling takes place, they need to prepare differently. Buyers have more information, buyers are more prepared, transparency exists in so much, where you know, in the past knowledge was power. I think that equation is gone, right? So lack of information is now risk in my view. So A, preparation. Sales people need to absolutely prepare differently. Second area that I would emphasize is the actual sales call itself. That you know, sales calls today are golden, right? It's you know, tough to get time with clients, prospects, everyone's got budget constraints, pressures of the economy. So in today's business world that sales call is absolutely golden. And how you go about preparing yourself and conducting that call is absolutely critical. And the third is truly bringing value to your customers. That's not new. I think there's always been the time where you've had to bring value. But value today means something different. It means helping that prospect or client organization address their customers' concerns and issues. But it's not just bringing them a solution, it's helping them think about how they can solve the problems of their customers. So how do you deliver value when there's less money around? A great question. There are ways, right? I mean I think at the end of the there's money being spent. When you look at the studies about training in the US for example, it's still you're talking about a fifty, sixty billion dollar marketplace. And in sales training fifteen billion, sixteen billion, and to outside providers like Richardson, you know, three, four billion dollars. So I tell my team regardless of where this market goes, there are people that need training, that need sales performance improvement, sales effectiveness. So how you win business is you need to make sure that your solution has priority. And in order to do that as a sales person you have to convey the need, right? You have to understand the need. Again, that used to you know, solution selling or needs based selling, that was good enough at the time. Today it's not good enough. The need is one. Then what is the value to your client or prospect, and how will it help their business succeed. So you've really got to have a much deeper sense of your client or prospect's organization, and their business challenges in order to you know, to actually succeed in today's marketplace.

>> David, you've addressed what to do. Can you explain to us how to do it?

>> Sure. Well I think implementation is the key. You know, lots of money is being spent on you know, enterprise-wide sales training initiatives, right? Well thought out initiatives that start with diagnostic assessments, and you know, you have e-learning, you have sales tools, you have classroom, you have follow-up and reinforcement, all that great stuff creates behavior change. Well the other studies and sales executive council for one cites that thirty days after you go through a learning, you're, what you've learned is gone unless it's reinforced. All right, so that comes back to implementation, and that's really where you have to have a better, or stronger partnership with your client organization. Because management is responsible for implementation. Providers like us, you know, we can only go so far, unless they want to outsource to us, and we can come in and do it. But the end of the day, an organization has to know what it's trying to change, its culture, its business model, its approach to the market. Has to know how it's going to measure that change, and then all of that good stuff has to come back into the training, and let the training become a vehicle for change. So to me, implementation is really, should be on the minds of every business today.

>> So what is your secret sauce for implementation?

>> Well yeah, our secret sauce. I think it's understanding you know, you don't always get it right. No one is perfect, right? So where we see best success, it's really the client's implementation. So again, I caution you know, anyone to think that implementation is a responsibility of a third party provider. We play a big role. Yet implementation success starts with identifying who we want to be, who we are, client, who we want to be, how we will get there, how we will measure whether we got there or not. And then what do I expect of my organization, for example what values should be in place, and how will they manage to those values. Then taking all that knowledge, I can build a comprehensive training solution that supports every one of those aspects. And there you have the secret sauce, that training is truly the vehicle to drive culture change.

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>> Well thank you David. We're going to continue our conversation with Dave DeStefano tomorrow, where we talk about his secrets to innovation, and thriving in this tough economy.

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==== Transcribed by Automatic Sync Technologies ====