What are the needs of the sales team?

Sales development needs must begin with an understanding of the intricacies of the buyer and seller relationship. Simply put, you must help sales team members leverage a standard sales process. This requires that youknow as much, if not more, about the sales process as the sales team members who employ it. While many sales team members have been trained on a standard process, or have figured it out on their own, you are in a unique position to prioritize, organize, and implement the appropriate sales training activity to improve its execution -- as long as you know what you're doing.

The steps below are recurring cycle. Leveraging this analysis tool, you can improve efficiency and manage sales team development processes more effectively, within a strategic context.

This tool offers a structured way for you to identify, prioritize, and implement sales training solutions. Because the approach is a system's approach, it can help sales teams align to the buying organization, focus on ratcheting up performance, and address immediate problems while keeping an eye on the longer term. Sales managers and sales trainers will approach each sales training action with information about their organization, the buying organization, and the relationship between them.

The model's five phases are:

1. identify: determine desired outcome(s) required to achieve the overall sales strategy

2. examine: determine gaps in achieving the desired outcomes

3. enable: develop specific recommendations and solutions for success

4. execute: create a comprehensive plan and get buy-in from stakeholders

5. evaluate: collect feedback and measure against the expected outcomes.

As organizations begin to think of sales development needs within a phased, cyclical process, they are better equipped to adopt an overall holistic approach to sales force recruiting, retention, and engagement that includes talent management and leadership development - building a path towards improved sales team performance.

Following this approach can help your organization understand the alignment of areas of sales force expertise in relation to long-term sales goals. By determining the key questions outlined under each step of the sales development analysis tool, you can begin to see how each phase builds upon the one before, and how specific skills and knowledge are developed. It will help you set the stage within your organization to effect the paradigm shift from "sales training" to "sales development and performance," and will guide your efforts to make the business case for this shift as well as tie it to desired business outcomes. By adopting this approach, you can ensure that your sales organization is knowledgeable, engaged, and equipped to work with even the most demanding buyers to ensure your company's future growth and profitability.

Perhaps more importantly, this model serves as a continuous improvement framework. When you have accomplished step 5, it's time to begin anew at step 1.