Hi,

Your message is intriguing and difficult to answer. I am going to try to walk the line between giving you some information - without looking I am saying "Call me!! Call me!!!" :D Hope this worksÂ?.

I think, I can say - for all my fellow trainers and sales consultants out there - that there are no "typical answers"

A few guidelines:

(1) Hourly rates go from $100 to $10,000. There are few consultants I know that work on an hourly basis. Most will bill by the day or the project. MY specific billing practice is value based on the project because I believe your project should have a beginning and an end - you have to eventually learn to be self sufficient. IN my mind, its unethical to bill hourly because then I have no incentive to end the project....

(2) There are no typical project rates because their are no typical projects. I can tell you that I have clients that pay me $600 per month and other that pay $10,000 depending on the project scope, deliverables and value. You should expect to pay between $5,000 - $10,000 for an initial analysis and evaluation of the situation, and a detailed plan of what to do next

(3) You will find some company's - like Steve Kraner's, and mine (Engage selling) that do offer both. I am sorry that I can't offer advice on the rest of the sales experts on this panel ( and I hope they don't take offence to me not mentioning them!) Some only offer training and other's only consulting.

The short answer is, its best to speak to the trainers and consultants directly and let them find out more about your project so that they can provide an accurate price, and deliverable proposal as well as references to prove they can do the work. Working a consultant isn't for everyone - and who you work with is a personal decision. In our business we are careful that if we do mutually decide to "engage," with a client, we are all sure it's because we both feel there will be a high degree of value added to your business.

The most important thing is to feel comfortable with the consultant you chose. They will be working closely with you and your team and you have to be confident that they can do the job - and get results!

You're starting with price. A good salesperson would start with the problem (diagnose) and then prescribe - and the price is part of the prescription.

Call a good sales consultant and be open to a solid diagnostic. Like many professions, you'll find more bad ones than good ones, and the good ones are busy and expensive.

To find a good one:

1) Look at the Hotshots listings here.
2) Watch how they sell, and see if it's effective.

Tom:

If you are still looking for information on sales training and consultants, you might try www.ESResearchCorp.com.

Dave

Hi Patrick,

I don't know of any particular courses I can recommend but here are some things you might consider:
1) Most of the "strategic" courses are designed to help reps strategize sales that require a high number of interactions with different levels and functional types of people. What drives these kinds of sales is the perception of higher risk in making a purchase decision: the greater the risk, the more people involved, the longer the sales cycle, the greater need for strategy. Often, when products can be sold over the phone, they don't have the same perception of risk and therefore don't require as strategic an approach. Therefore the ideal training maybe more tactical in nature and could be categorized as "call management" versus the "deal management" or "account management" which is taught in more strategy focused programs.

2) While there are some very good off-the shelf progams on the market which do an excellent job at providing tactical pointers, my recommendation is to have a look at your overall sales processes first: are you calling on the right market, do your sales people have the right tools (webex presentations, scripts, and demos), and do you have a good handle on the sales process and ensure that your reps know how to drag people through it. Once you have this baked, a generic sales training program can certainly add value provided you develop the follow-on processes to encourage the full adoption of the techniques learned. However, if you are not sure if all the necessary elements of your sales model are in place, then a better starting point might be to engage someone to audit your sales process and perhaps design something that is very targeted to your product and customer's needs.

Hope that helps,

Greg Nutter
www.soloquent.com

First let me say that I don't believe in packaged solutions to optimize specific problems. It is like buying a play book as a preparation for a big sports tournament.

The best thing is to find someone who is very smart and that has enough experience to know if a good idea has a good chance to actually work.

Once you find this person you sit together and you brain storm until you have a plan. The plan and the execution will be as unique as your business.

I know from my experience with Colleen (Engage Selling Solutions at www.Engageselling.com) that she can be a great asset to have.

I know that good chemistry is crucial to make any optimization process work and Colleen apart from her obvious sales training and consulting expertise is also great at making it interesting and even fun :)

In some sales training / consulting engagements that I have seen, esp. the wasted ones the key factor was chemistry and ability to accomplish progress that could be adopted as part of everyday business work and not just as a weird punishment to sales people and management :) .

...and the money... the right person will tailor the solution to your budget in a way that will make sense to both. You both want a long term relationship of constant business improvement.

Roy Daya, CEO
www.digital-clay.com

DigitalClay is a smart application engine for building dynamic software solutions without coding.

http://roydaya.com