The Economic Impact of Delaying Sales Training By 30 Days

One of my principles is teaching discovery toward real Economic Impact for the prospect/customer. One thing is true and withstands the test of time: waiting and delaying sales training, you are delaying more and new revenue (as of right now, this means delaying new revenue until September 1, 2023). 

Delaying Sales Training

Here’s the math to prove my point:

• Hiring – A few months
  • • New VP start date, May 1 at the earliest, June maybe more likely.
    • $10,000 hard cost internally before they get hired.
    • Interviewing People Hours
      • Your Economic Impact of Time
        • 2 hrs per interview, the prep, the interview, and the post interview discussions
        • Assume 5 interviews
        • 10 hours of your time at $250/ hr
        • $2,500 hard costs
      • 3 other people in your org
        • Another $7,500 hard costs and that’s conservative
  • VP – First 30 days
    • $30,000 hard costs
      • Review and redefine the process and exit criteria
      • Assess the team
      • No real training, maybe some call coaching, but only if they are on the call
    • If they choose to engage me, or another trainer (only because they have used them before):
      • That will take a few weeks to vet the situation
      • Then meet with you and others
      • Request budget, get the budget approved
  • Training starts June 1 (if it works perfectly)
    • Reminder, 90-day sales cycle (September 1 revenue closes)
    • Reminder if it’s EOM or EOQ, you may delay to July (if calendar system)
  • Mid-July Training (vacations?)
    • Reminder 90 day sales cycle (October 15, revenue closes)
  • Now, if the VP also wants to hire a few new reps, that will delay further because they want to get them onboard
• Current Sales Team
  • Underperforming now
  • Morale issues 
  • The compounding effect of nobody giving enough of the right coaching 
    • Even if it’s you, you don’t have the time
  • This also means you hurt cash flow
• Economic Impact based on our conversation
  • Avg Sales Cycle – 90 days
  • ARR – $30k
  • LTV- 3+ years
  • Each new customer is worth $100k
  • Each rep closes 1 new customer each year, that’s a minimum $600k of LTV
  • Each rep closes 6 more deals/ year, that is $3,6m
  • Valuation of company increases by $20m-$30m

On The Flip Side

• Sales training starts the week of April 15
• Current deals in the pipeline will either be moved out or closed faster
• New deals that start the week of April 15 close on July 15
• You have 6 full months of the year to drive more revenue
• Better valuation by December 31

Reinforcement Concerns

• My 4 weeks of reinforcement training is better than what they are getting now.
  • Guaranteed behavior changes
  • Guaranteed stickiness
  • Guaranteed more revenue
• Hypothesis: 
  • They are not getting any training now
  • They are not getting real coaching 
    • Sorry, not sorry, if that were the case we would not have had a conversation about their skills.
  • They are getting deal coaching on the “low-hanging fruit.” 
  • They are getting deal coaching on the “what can we get over the finish line”
  • There is little to no stickiness

So yes, you can press pause on training or you can spend $15k (with anyone) and start making improvements now.

Happy to chat when you feel the time is right.