Sales Performance International
Data-driven Sales Training to Drive Measurable Performance Improvement

The pace of business change is accelerating and the pressure on sales organizations to adapt to that change is increasing continuously. This reality coupled with the evolved, highly informed buyer behavior, has forced companies to adopt new techniques for training and developing their salespeople. Although the investment in sales training and technology (in the billions) has increased significantly, sales quota attainment has actually declined over the last five consecutive years in the US. Due to this discrepancy, many organizations are looking for an approach to capability development that can accurately measure the impact on the performance of salespeople.

A data-driven approach can make all the difference. Sales Performance International (SPI), a sales performance training company applies analytic models to ensure that sales organizations are aligned with their company’s growth strategies and focus their time, effort, and money on developing the relevant skills. Through its technology platform (SPI-1), which is a closed-loop system that offers individualized learning and practice, SPI helps its customers align professional development with specific, measurable sales goals. The platform continuously enhances performance for sales organizations by identifying, reinforcing, and measuring the necessary capabilities that impact actual specific goals and metrics.

While SPI has been training sales teams for over 30 years, they have invested extensively in technology to radically change the overall approach to learning and development. Unlike old methods, which were based on large monolithic deployments and where most of the participants failed to retain and apply what was taught in the classroom, SPI utilizes a data-driven approach to develop salespeople in more agile “sprints.”

Using data-driven models to prioritize high impact competencies, SPI-1 serves up specific content that is required to develop skills in precisely the right areas for the business.

When organizations recognize avenues that are going to provide a positive return on the investment, they invest their resources accordingly

Following training, SPI uses technology “assistants” directly embedded with CRM systems to support salespeople’s application of the newly learned skills in real life situations.

With the help of data and analysis, the company captures every individual’s developmental progress very precisely and simultaneously captures snapshots of specific sales goals and metrics from organizations’ CRM and financial system. This enables the sales organization to analyze its investment in development compared to the measurable impact on their sales and business goals.

Jürgen Heyman, CEO, SPI, believes that there is an increasing focus on investment into the development of selling skills. “When organizations recognize avenues that are going to provide a positive return on the investment, they invest their resources accordingly. SPI-1 is the only platform available today that houses the data from the alignment models, assessment models, learn practice-coach-models, and CRM and tool application data. This data provides a new type of insight to organizations to compare, analyze, and then apply reinforcement learning over time, allowing them to move from descriptive analytics to predictive analytics.”

A firm believer of culture and language, SPI offers its programs in over 20 languages across the globe and hundreds of global customers. “One of our recent customers indicates that within 11 months they generated over 320 million dollars of additional revenue through SPI’s approach to performance improvement,” says Robert Kear, CTO. With 15 percent growth in revenue and profit in 2018, SPI is planning to expand its geographical horizons, and continue its investment in the digital transformation of sales capability development.