Sales Research & Insights

Discover a more efficient way to absorb new selling capabilities so that they can be used when they matter most: right now.

The landscape of sales training is subject to constant change—whether from technology, buyer education, communication strategies, or training delivery methods. As markets continue to grow and evolve in complexity, learning leaders need to actualize their organizations’ initiatives by adhering to best practices in the design & delivery of sales training programs.

In our brief, Three Ways to Build Trust with Customers in Today’s Setting, we explain why the customer’s trust has diminished in recent months and how sales professionals can respond while there is time.

There is no single competency that drives sales excellence — rather, a collection of capabilities are needed across the selling process. Explore each capability needed as teams create, grow, negotiate, and win pursuits.

Download this brief to discover three concepts that together create the most effective framework for a virtual sales kickoff meeting.

Download this brief to learn how to align your growth strategy and goals to deliver immediate 6 - month wins.

In the brief, How to Budget for Sales Training in 2021, we outline three ways in which sales leaders can secure budget resources to train their teams to sell virtually.

Download the brief to discover the importance of establishing clear guidelines for channel partners will help manage expectations and engagement in the long-term.

Download our checklist to ensure your sales kick-off instils the confidence, enthusiasm, and momentum that drives improved results.

Download this complimentary research to discover what companies seeking to deliver effective sales training should be paying attention to in order to have a consistent influence on employee behavior.

Download this guide to discover fifteen critical questions in four categories, that enable you to clearly identify and prioritise your needs. The guide also includes an evaluation grid, so that you can score potential providers consistently and make an optimum choice.

Learn how to maximize the value of your investment in sales training by overcoming the common factors that cause sales training to fail.

Discover what sales learners think about the training their receiving and how to identify sales training and development investments that drive learner outcomes in this informative research.

Download the brief to learn how to use integrated technology and a data-driven approach for sales improvement in your organization.

Learn how training professionals at pharmaceutical, biotech, medical device, and life sciences companies are now training sales teams.

Learn how commercial banks are reconfiguring their competencies for the future by leveraging existing skills in new ways to fully engage customers over virtual channels.

Bring your team together to align on strategy and build skills in a virtual setting. Discover the secret to hosting effecive virtual sales team meetings.

John Elsey, President and CEO of Richardson Sales Performance and SPI, discusses the three key factors driving the substantial ROI of a VILT solution.

Explore data from hundreds of survey responses revealing the current selling climate and how sales professionals are responding.

Learn how sales training will improve the productivity for companies within your private equity (PE) firm's business portfolio.

Explore the 10 principles behind an effective virtual instructor-led training (VILT) environment.

In this brief, we explore how leaders can replicate the classroom experience without the need for travel.

With input from more than 500 sales professionals this report offers tips & insights to overcome the challenges facing sales professionals in 2020.

In Richardson Sales Performance and SPI's eBook, The Three Skills for Selling with Agility, we explore three specific ways sales professionals can keep pace with the customer’s changing scope of needs and win the sale.

Effective leaders seek sales training solutions that have measurable results. In SPI and Richardson Sales Performance’s brief, we provide a four-part framework for structuring sales training that allows for ROI measurement.

In the brief, CEO Insights: Five Factors Driving Change in 2020, John Elsey, President and CEO of Richardson Sales Performance and SPI sales training, discusses what sales leaders need to succeed in 2020.

Our year-end eBook summarizes Richardson Sales Performance's most impactful content from 2019. This eBook includes in-depth research from more than 25 sources to bring you the best ideas for embracing accelerated change.

In Richardson Sales Performance’s latest brief, Why Strong Sales Enablement Is Strong Buyer Enablement, we reveal how sales enablement professionals can also become strong buyer enablement professionals.

Discover the answers to some of the most frequently asked questions about sales and sales training from the experts at Richardson Sales Performance.

Explore four specific ways to bring the customer back into the dialogue to create urgency around making the purchase

Understanding how your customers make decisions helps you navigate the buying journey and improve your team's sales performance.

Learning science provides powerful information that helps us drive revenue. Discover how to leverage adult learning psychology to improve sales training.

With Richardson Sales Performance’s brief, “A Streamlined Approach to Onboarding Sales Professionals,” we look at five key steps to designing an onboarding process that equips sales professionals to perform.

Explore the science behind customer decision making and learn the surprising ways customer decision making process unfolds.

Selling connected, holistic, and digital solutions demands higher-level skills. Sales professionals must be able to position the technology and the transformation.
In Richardson Sales Performance’s white paper, Selling in the Era of Digital Transformation, we outline what capabilities sales professionals need and how to achieve them.

In Richardson Sales Performance’s brief, Building a Sales Culture, our Chief Sales Officer Steve Dodman details the three key steps to building an effective, lasting sales culture.

Download the eBook, How to Build a Sales Academy, to discover the components of a curriculum designed to engage sales professionals across various roles in a sales organization.

In Richardson Sales Performance’s brief, Using Learning Analytics to Expose Impact, we review three key areas of measurement for sales training initiatives and the metrics that leaders need to consider for each

Active learning works because it gets the learner involved. Learn why engagement drives deeper learning when participants: see it, try it, check it, and apply it.

Discover the sales challenges that lie ahead in 2021. Richardson Sales Performance's annual research uncovers the challenges facing sellers across industries and geographies.

Discover the critical elements of an effective B2B sales training program and explore how partnering with Richardson Sales Performance will drive success for your team.

Effective learning leverages multiple strategies. That’s why Richardson Sales Performance’s approach combines digital learning with traditional workshop experience. Download the brief, Why Blended Learning Boosts Performance, to discover three critical pieces that drive learning that sticks.

Download this infographic to access a summary of the results of Richardson Sales Performance's 2019 Selling Challenges Study and learn about the challenges sales professionals face in the modern sales environment. 

Richardson Sales Performance’s 2019 Selling Challenges Study reveals a panoramic view of the changes confronting sales professionals today.

Sustainment should mean getting better at every turn. Download the white paper Redefining Skill Sustainment to learn why leaders need to start thinking about sustainment in a new way.

Download the brief, AI In Sales Is Progress But Not A Panacea, to discover three key challenges to using AI as a sales tool and what leaders can do to overcome them.

New research reveals what your sales team wants from a sales academy. Find out how to build a training program that engages your sellers and drives results.

Download this eBook to explore dozens of studies to uncover the psychological principles driving the customer’s decision-making process.

Discover what sales professionals want from a sales academy. Download the complimentary infographic summarizing new research from Richardson Sales Performance.

Discover what elements over 350 sales professionals think is important in a sales academy. New research from TrainingIndustry and Richardson Sales Performance.

A strategic approach to defining your sales training budget will help you build the best training program and drive more ROI.

In Richardson Sales Performance’s latest brief, The Top 10 Considerations for Your Sales Training Budget in 2019, we provide that strategy with ten clear factors needed in any training budget.

Discover the impact a multi-role sales curriculum drives for organizations and the best training programs for each sales role within the organization.

Sales leaders need a connected curriculum to access the skills needed in today’s market. In Building a Sales Curriculum for Every Sales Professional, we break down the skills each sales role needs to succeed.

Outside sales of field sales is the practice of selling a business’s products or services outside the office. Field sales professionals often travel to the customer’s location to engage them directly in a sale. This method of selling is particularly important today because more stakeholders are involved in purchasing decisions than before. Addressing these groups requires in-person meetings. Face-to-face engagement is critical for getting sophisticated and large...

The cost of sales training varies according to the number of sales professionals being trained and the program. Discover how you can calculate the real cost of sales training and determine whether the investment will deliver the results and ROI you desire for your team.

Sales training is an investment in your company's future - but how much should it really cost? Further, what is the cost of not investing in sales training? Discover the direct and indirect costs of sales training in Richardson Sales Performance's latest brief - The Economics of Sales Training.

Sales effectiveness refers to a company’s ability to generate sales. Greater sales effectiveness means driving sales performance by winning the right kind of customers that drive meaningful progress towards broader financial and operational goals. The term encompasses the various aspects of a business that must perform to create more wins. Therefore, true sales efficiency requires a coordinated effort from not only the sales team but also marketing, operations, and...

Richardson Sales Performance’s 2018 Selling Challenges Study reveals a panoramic view of the changes confronting sales professionals today. With hundreds of responses, we’ve captured timely insights into how 2018 will unfold and how to capitalize on a changing but robust economic setting.

Has your sales training made an impact? Look at the right sales metrics, and you’ll find out. In Richardson Sales Performance’s new brief, 8 Critical Selling Metrics, we reveal the eight-core sales metrics you should be looking at to measure the effectiveness and impact of your sales training.

Too often, sales kick-off meetings are considered an obligation rather than an opportunity. Make the most of your meeting by following these best practices.

Our sales effectiveness training system is proven to drive results for businesses across industries, geographies, and skill levels. Learn more here.

Measuring sales training effectiveness ensures your team is getting the full return on your investment, drives sustained behavior change, improved performance, and more revenue. This guide helps you develop a plan for measuring the effectiveness of your sales training initiative.

A training initiative is only as good as the plan to sustain learning following the training event. Discover Richardson Sales Performance's sustainment framework to see the impact an ongoing development plan drives for organizations.

Richardson Sales Performance has developed a flexible series of sales methodologies that addresses the challenges of today’s selling environment created by customers expecting more value and control of the sales cycle.

The use of verifiable outcomes has become more widely adopted by companies engaged in complex sales. These measures provide visibility into the sales process, pipeline performance, and forecasting. The problem, however, is that most of these verifiable outcomes are lagging indicators of past performance, not leading indicators of future achievement.

The goal of the following study is to explore and define the role of the training organization when implementing strategic initiatives in the sales organization.

Throughout this report, differences in the approaches used by organizations considered effective and organizations considered ineffective at sustaining sales training are emphasized.

Is it possible that the majority of organizations perform little more than due diligence around educating their market-facing sellers?

Got a new sales reps and a big training plan to get them up and running? Good. Understand that long-term, post-training reinforcement of best practices is a Best-In-Class practice? Much better.

The 2016 Sales Challenges Study uncovers the issues that sales professionals foresee in the year ahead that have the potential to interfere with achieving quota.

What does it take to build a world-class sales on boarding program? It begins with a defined purpose and internal measures of success.

Global companies often have global customers who have global expectations need to institute global sales training initiatives to ensure a consistent buyer experience across geographic borders.

As new products and markets are launched to keep revenues moving forward, sales organizations are challenged to keep pace. Sellers need new skills, and they need them quickly.

The 2017 Sales Challenges Study uncovers the issues that sales professionals foresee in the year ahead that have the potential to interfere with achieving quota.

Successful sustainment of new behaviors requires attention to five steps that all individuals pass through after training. By focusing organizational attention on each step, new behaviors become embedded in your sales team’s daily operations.