A survey of about 400 B2B salespeople and marketers around the world, conducted by Corporate Visions, has found that salespeople are not being armed with the right tools to deliver new product messages. In turn, almost 60% of respondents believe that only a minority of salespeople are delivering new product messages the way they were intended. Among the issues uncovered: only 38% of companies offer formal training to sales reps for new product launches at least three-quarters of the time, and only 22% said sales reps are required to demonstrate proficiency in message delivery.
Instead, 34% of respondents said there is no structured process to ensure adoption of proper message delivery practices. Another 27% said that while reps are encouraged to practice messages, they’re not held accountable for proper delivery.
In addition to not consistently getting trained, the researchers note that sales reps may be lacking interactive training tools, with virtual training (41%) and collateral (32%) currently the top tools used to aid representatives in delivering new product messages. By contrast, whiteboarding and role-playing sessions accounted for only 3% of responses.
Finally, almost one-third of respondents said coaching sessions are never offered to reinforce proper delivery of new product messages, with another third saying these sessions are only offered once or twice a year.