Generally, a return of and on the investment made in training occurs within a very short period of time.  Additionally, the return is also generally substantial, with many of our clients getting a return of their investment within a sales cycle through an increase in sales they would have ordinarily lost, never competed for, increased size of sale, or shortened sales cycle. 

For example, it is not unusual for many clients in Saudi Arabia to see an increase in first appointments set of 80% or more in the first few weeks coming out of training.  As first appointments are the precursor to the sales process, an increase in sales generally also follows. Our clients in Saudi Arabia have reported that their sales have been increased by 15% to 70%. The amounts of the increase differ among regions over the kingdom. Obviously, returns vary with the commitment made by management to enforcement and implementation of the methodologies.  

It is our opinion that prospective clients should view the cost of sales training as an investment.  And as we believe in measuring everything we do, we stand ready to help you determine how to measure a return on the investment of DEI training workshops with you prior to you agreeing to use our training.

Most salespeople and selling operations use some sort of "pipeline" or sales "funnel." We dislike both terms and use them only because they are so much part of sales parlance.

Your "pipeline" is supposed to tell you how much you are going to sell and roughly who you might sell to. It should be more or less 100% accurate. Experience tells us that most pipelines are not remotely accurate - 100% of the time.

Most sales pipelines are full - jammed in fact - with "dead" prospects and populated by people whom we hope will buy but who turn out never to buy. As a result most sales forecasts are wildly wrong, even for the coming week or month.

Your sales pipeline is also supposed to tell you when your sales will happen. We had never encountered a pipeline system that does this
accurately. So we invented our own. It's called the "Board."

A System that Works: D.E.I. developed a new approach to prospect (pipeline) management in the late 1980s that is now used effectively by tens of thousands of salespeople worldwide. It was designed to retain only those active prospects that are likely to reach closed and drops poor and inactive prospects. Crucially, it's a visual system that lets you see what you have and what you don't have.

The D.E.I. Prospect Management System is based on ratios; all available evidence tells us that the vast majority of salespeople have more prospects moving back than they have moving forward. When you know that ratio you are in a position to not just sell some but to sell your quota - consistently and on time.

A program with D.E.I. will typically include three elements:

• Pre-Work: Customization
• Workshops & Training Programs
• Follow up methods

   1. Pre-Work: Customization

This is the set-up phase when we learn a great deal more about the detailed workings of your selling operation and then adapt our system so that it can be quickly implemented in your working environment.

Workbooks must be customized. All case studies, handouts, and exercises must be developed “from the ground up,” Principles for standardizing conversational openings, and for practicing the transitions that follow them, must be accomplished as the result of  on-site field work with the team and with senior team members.

 2 The Workshops & Training Programs

Running for between two (2) and four (3) days, D.E.I. instructor-led workshops provide you the necessary principles, systems and skills and deliver a "comprehensive" program that covers the full selling system from appointment-making through selling and complete prospect management.

(click here to find out more about our programs)

   3. Follow-up Methods

D.E.I. comes back to work with the salespeople and/or the managers, usually within one month after an initial workshop and then often over an extended period. This ensures that refresher material can be delivered and that improvement goals are being met or that people are on the way to meeting them. A good follow-through program will secure more reliable and consistent results and bring more predictability to your sales.

DEI also believes that no training program should be viewed as an individual event, but as a process and a journey.  We therefore build into each program, a series of follow-up steps, with both sales management and the sales staff, which will vary with each program and each organization’s specific challenges.  Examples of those steps are as follows:

•  Pipeline review meetings with the sales teams to review their prospect management boards to reinforce techniques to focus on right opportunities and forecast accurately

•  Meetings with the sales teams to review appointment making techniques to monitor, measure and manage the team’s ratios.

•  Cold calling support software designed to reinforce the key metrics of DEI’s selling model and track prospects through DEI’s patented “Board” forecasting system, all of which prolongs the positive effects of training.

•  Newsletters and articles to reinforce participant’s knowledge as gained from the face-to-face workshops.

•  As most of our workshops are based on the best selling books and tapes of our founder, Stephan Schiffman, there is generally a book available for each workshop (arabized) that reinforces the methodologies as taught in the workshops - Sales Professionals need to constantly educate themselves about selling and how selling works.

•  Workshop workbooks in which participants make their own notes to go along with the well thought out teaching materials designed to be used as follow up documents.

•  Selling tools such as prospect management portfolios, etc.

•  Individual coaching and assessment of each participant.

Follow-Through is essential. We insist upon it.  It ensures that results start to emerge early and you get the opportunity to measure us.

To date, we have trained over a half a million sales people in North America, South America, Europe, Middle East and Asia at over 9,000 companies including IBM, AT&T, Bank Albilad, NCCI, HSBC, Sony, Boise Office Solutions, Nextel Communications, Cox Communications, and Fleet Bank…to name a few.

(click here to find out more about our clients)