Smart Lemming Diary »

August 24, 2005

My CEO, Tom, wants the sales training for our first Value-Added Reseller (VAR) relationship to be on August 31. Secretly, I was hoping it would be kicked to September 8 or 9, but there is urgency to get it done ASAP. Most of the sales support and focus for the past couple of months has been for the VAR, leaving us in a poor position of having four to five customers that want to sign contracts.

Despite this demand for our product, we don’t have a contract for them to sign, since the VAR master agreement isn’t signed Tom’s company and the VAR. Yesterday, he had a productive call with VAR’s VP of Sales to review the red lined version of the agreement. The net effect of the deal? The VAR is committing to selling sixty units of our product by year-end, but they need sales training before they can even start.

Sales Training Agenda
I have participated in four sales trainings before, two of which I organized and managed with my former VP. The VAR’s VP of Sales didn’t know what the agenda should be, so during a conference call, I rattled off an agenda during my Friday call with her when Tom was on vacation. The agenda will be as follows:

1. Industry & Company Overview: Product Training, Target audience, business goals, feature set, Solution Development Prompters (SDP), and Product information Sheet & collateral, etc.
2. Competition: Profiles, Strengths & Weaknesses, & Positioning
3. Sales Tools: Sales Presentation, Sales presentation, demo presentation w/ notes, Sales presentation, Product demo, ROI Financial Dashboard, ROI financial dashboard sample report and ROI Terms and Definitions
4. Mechanics/Administrative: Pricing, Pricing FAQs, Pricing policy, Online Demo, Online demo policy, Standard proposal template - Channel Partner, and Online demo calendar
5. Technical Aspects for Sales: Technical FAQs, Hosting and Security Overview, and Hosting Escalation and Response Times
6. Our Client Services (Implementation and Support): Overview of CS, IT Scope & Effort Estimate, Proposed Kickoff Agenda, Training Agenda, Systems Reporting Tool Overview, Overview of Maintenance Services, and Sample System Integration Specification
7. Sales & Marketing Programs: Target Audience: National Accounts – Existing Accounts, Target Audience: Large Qualified Prospects – Existing Pipeline, and Target Audience: New Prospects – Larger Prospects

Remaining Work

We’ve completed 23 of 52 deliverables or 56% percent complete, based on existing materials I’ve created or that has been generated by others. I have 24 deliverables to complete between now and August 31. The bulk of the work are the business goals by target audience mapped to feature set and the SDPs.

The Smart Lemming Diary is a series that chronicles a journey of laid-off worker, who becomes a Vice President of Sales Operations & Marketing for a small entrepreneurial healthcare technology company. For previous entries in this series, click here.