Merit Career Development Blog | Entries from January 2022

Optimizing ROI in Sales Force Training Programs

Sales PresentationA CFO, nervous about the cost of sales training, argues with the CEO. “What if we pay for all this training and these employees leave?” the CFO asks. The CEO replies, “What if we don’t pay for the training and they stay?”

Although the story from Peter Baeklund illustrates an old business witticism, when it comes to optimizing sales performance, effective training with significant return on investment is the key to success. For the company to see true ROI, the tools and skills learned in the classroom need to be transferred into the work environment where employees can use them to make the sales.

Taking the Right Steps


Donald Kirkpatrick, former president of the American Society for Training and Development, first published his Four-Level Training Evaluation Model in the Training and Development Journal in 1959. It was subsequently updated twice, once in 1975 and again in 1994 when he published one of his most well-known pieces, “Evaluating Training Programs.” Since then, his works have guided effective training exercises in the corporate environment. Kirkpatrick’s lessons involve four essential levels of evaluations:

  • Reaction: Capturing participants’ satisfaction with the experience immediately following training, gauging initial thoughts and feelings about the program
  • Learning: Measuring the increase in knowledge of skills as a result of training
  • Behavior: Assessing retention and whether participants can apply what they have learned in the workplace
  • Results: Addressing changes in performance and how the improvements have benefited the organization.

With today’s fast-paced and changing economy, the old guard methods of learning and development have become obsolete. Feedback forms don’t tell us if the training has been effectively retained. The real ROI is what happens when employees are back on the job – three months, six months and a year down the line. Learning, behavior and retention must be measured by then.

The sales force is integral to a company’s success and requires extensive training to adequately market its products and services. Sales employees must have a variety of selling techniques under their belts. For example, selling to a CFO or other C-level executive requires a significantly different approach than selling to an entry-level purchaser.

Current training modules need to reflect these differences. The challenge is helping sales professionals communicate clearly and effectively with high-level executives, cutting out technical jargon that can get in the way and listening to the client’s needs. More advanced and updated forms of training are needed to bolster the performance of the sales team, which in turn could result in an improved bottom line.

Achieving multi-million dollar success


A world-renowned international technology company hired Merit Career Development to improve the skills of its sales force. Merit’s powerful training techniques and tools enabled the employees to close a deal worth millions of dollars in transactions within six months of completing the course. The financial impact was huge as they earned a substantial amount of profits for the company.

Much of the training entailed developing pitches and proposals targeted to high-level executives without the need for convoluted vocabularies. Simplifying the language allows a pitch to appeal to multiple audiences and makes the information accessible to a large range of potential buyers. The program is now used around the world for hundreds of participants per year.

With its fully customizable courses that can be tailor-made to fit any business, Merit ensures that their clients receive the highest possible ROI on sales programs. To learn more, review Merit’s course list or contact Merit today.

Use the Iron Triangle to Frame Your Pitch to Upper Management

Framing information and using the Iron Triangle - time, cost and scope - can be instrumental in gaining support from senior executives for your projects.Framing information and using the Iron Triangle – time, cost and scope – can be instrumental in gaining support from senior executives for your projects.

In their 2002 book, “Selling Project Management to Senior Executives: Framing The Moves That Matter,” authors Janice Thomas, Ph.D., Connie Delisle, Ph.D., and Kam Jugdev, Ph.D., highlight the challenges that project managers face when trying to sell a plan to senior management. The primary issue lies in communicating the benefits of the assignment and approaching the situation with the right frame.

“Framing” is the perspective we bring to decision-making based on past experiences. In her renowned book on the subject, “The Power of Framing: Creating the Language of Leadership,” Gail Fairhurst, Ph.D., says that when we are communicating through frames, we are shaping the reality of a situation.

But framing can have a negative effect when it’s not used with careful thought, so it’s important to choose the proper frame when promoting a project to upper management. By presenting the vital information in a concrete and practical way, project managers can use the Iron Triangle of time, cost and scope to prove to executives how the company will improve its bottom line.

Breaking Through Their Barriers


From CEOs to CFOs, top-level executives are concerned with maintaining profitability. Therefore, they are often wary of using valuable resources like time and workflow in projects that have a potential for failure. When it comes to pitching assignments to them, executives need to understand the positive outcomes that project management will provide the business.

In their book, Thomas, Delisle and Jugdev explain that project management is becoming increasingly important to organizations that are looking to grow within their sectors. Project managers have to present the main components of the project in the right context while managing the realistic expectations of their executives.

The steps of persuasion


When framing a project management pitch for senior leadership, persuasion is an effective tool. In “The Necessary Art of Persuasion,” author Jay Conger, D.B.A., senior research scientist at the University of Southern California’s Center for Effective Organizations, underscored the efficacy of persuasion and discussed four distinct steps that project managers should use for framing discussions with upper management:

  1. Establish credibility
  2. Identify common ground and use it to frame goals
  3. Reinforce position with language and evidence
  4. Connect emotionally.
Successful project leaders position the assignment as a solution to corporate problems. They use executive-level language and concepts that resonate with upper management and present their information using the Iron Triangle focusing on time, cost and scope of the project. Senior executives want business results that can be achieved at lower expense to the company, and by presenting evidence in the right light, managers can ensure that their leaders support their efforts.