Based on research by the Sales Executive Board, today 57 percent of B2B buying steps are completed before buyers connect with a salesperson; however, many B2B companies have not yet adapted to a buying cycle powered by today’s digital customer. This demonstrates the need for a significant shift in how sales leaders address training and development within their sales organizations. Too often, sales reps find themselves unable to clearly identify buying signals or effectively manage the buying process in a way that meets the customers’ needs.

Here are three basic questions that sales leaders should be able to easily answer about today’s buying cycle:

1. How well can your sales team build relationships with customers via various channels?
2. How well does your sales process map to the buying cycle?
3. Are your reps able to have compelling and relevant conversations with qualified prospects online?

Sales leaders who spend most of their time putting out fires and scrambling to meet quotas have less time to research and link with the right sales-training companies that have what they need and can help them prepare their reps for success with today’s buyer. That’s why Selling Power magazine editors have assembled a list of 10 firms that excel in helping sales managers improve the performance of their sales teams.

Each firm included on our 2012 Top 10 Sales Training Companies list has the potential to help you get better results, not just for your team and your company’s bottom line, but for your customers, as well.

We used four main criteria during our selection process: 1) a proven record of delivering results for sales leaders and sales teams, 2) innovative methods to both deliver and reinforce training, 3) customizable solutions and training methods to ensure high-quality results, 4) offerings that have been customized for the evolving needs of today’s sales organizations.

The summaries below will give you a quick snapshot of each company’s major offerings, and we encourage you to visit their Websites and social networks to learn more.

Selling Power is proud to continue to be a resource for B2B sales professionals and sales leaders, in good times and bad. As sales executives across the United States continue to face longer sales cycles and shifts in buyer priorities, use this list as a way to help you find the right sales-training and development firm so that you can continue to make sales excellence a high priority.

Note: This listing is organized in alphabetical order and no priority or ranking is implied.

The Brooks Group
The Brooks Group helps clients develop top-performing salespeople using the consistent, principles-based IMPACT Selling System as a platform for growth. Each engagement is fully customized, incorporating the comprehensive, whole-person TriMetrix assessment to identify strengths and critical development areas within the six-step IMPACT process.

New skills are taught via face-to-face classroom delivery, distance learning, or the state-of-the-art IMPACT Virtual Training options, and they are then reinforced through IMPACT Sales Coaching to ensure long-term improvement.
336/282-6303
www.thebrooksgroup.com

Carew International
Carew specializes in dimensions of professional selling, profit dimensions, advanced positional selling, target account strategies, building customer equity, and performance management. Carew emphasizes changing the skills, attitude, and success of every person who participates in its training and transforming the attitude and behaviors of every graduate.
1-800-227-3977
www.carew.com

Corporate Executive Board (CEB)
CEB helps senior executives and their teams drive corporate performance by supplying a powerful model to harness outside perspectives and best practices from more than 16,000 leading executives. For nearly three decades, CEB’s approach allows executives to tap into breakthrough innovation and proven practices, including innovative sales methods, that have been tried and tested by other companies.
571/303-3000
www.executiveboard.com

Forum Corporation
Forum Corporation trains in sales skills, sales management, customer acquisition and retention, sales strategy and planning, strategic prospecting, territory selling, enhancing relationships, advanced relationship management skills, and sales management coaching. Forum tailors the whole learning solution to accelerate results within an organization. Unique in its ability to mobilize world-class resources, Forum delivers top-quality content in expertly designed and implemented solutions.
1-800-FORUM11
www.forum.com

Fusion Learning
Fusion Learning’s training program for salespeople is an integrated, modular curriculum addressing consultative selling, strategic account management, proactive prospecting, customer service excellence, influential presentations, and winning negotiations. Fusion customizes sales and service training programs so that they are culturally specific to your business. Programs for sales managers  include Sales Leader BluePRINT and address managing activity and results, coaching, leading, and motivating.
416/424-2999
www.doubledigit-sales.com

PJF Sales Training
PJF Sales Training is administered by real-world sales training professionals who have spent time in corporate America as sales managers, directors, and vice presidents. Many have managed sales teams at Fortune 500 companies. PJF records show increased sales productivity in nearly all organizations that utilize PJF training.

Using face-to-face training, PJF offers six standard courses: The Seven Steps to the Sale, The 3 Ps to Sales Success, How to Interview and Hire the Right Sales Rep, Basic Sales Management Skills, Advanced Sales Management Skills, and Effective Time Management.
1-888-523-2442
www.pjftraining.com

Profit Builders
Founded by Keith Rosen, pioneer of management coach training and author of Coaching Salespeople Into Sales Champions, Profit Builders helps salespeople and managers achieve business objectives faster through its proven coaching framework used by top sales organizations, including Microsoft, Oracle, the NY Knicks, and 25 percent of Fortune 1000 companies. Sales leaders become world-class coaches who increase sales and profitability, improve forecast accuracy, transform underperformers, save time, accelerate sales cycles and retain top talent.
516/771-1444
www.profitbuilders.com

Sales Performance International (SPI)
SPI offers a variety of courses that help organizations adopt the best tools and exploit their capabilities to maximize sales. SPI courses include CRM Enablement, which focuses on aligning the sales process and your CRM system to improve adoption and adherence to CRM processes. A Solution Selling course integrates Solution Selling with mainstream CRM systems.

SPI’s Landslide CRM for Solution Selling is a complete CRM product, with the Solution Selling process built into it, for small and midsize businesses. Management Dashboards offers out-of-the-box Solution Selling dashboards for Salesforce.
704/227-6500
www.spisales.com

Sales Readiness Group (SRG)
SRG virtual training programs offer fast, effective, and flexible skills-based training solutions for organizations looking to maximize training budgets while minimizing time out of the field. SRG combines live facilitators, innovative instructional design, and a state-of-the-art, live, virtual-classroom training platform to provide attendees with a highly engaging, interactive classroom experience while leveraging the benefits of virtual training.
1-800-490-0715
www.salesreadinessgroup.com

ValueSelling Associates
ValueSelling trains reps in customer retention, interpersonal communication, negotiating, presentations, prospecting and qualifying, sales writing, selling to executives, team selling, and time management. It can deliver training in classrooms or through e-learning and has global reach, with training on four continents and in seven languages. ValueSelling pioneered e-learning for sales in the 1990s and can use e-learning for any sales training program.
858/759-3565
www.valueselling.com