Here are a few selected testmonials from large and smaller companies. Please contact us for more information.
"When we embarked on an initiative to identify, evaluate and select a long-term sales training partner, we realized that the inherent challenges and distractions involved with that effort might threaten our day-to-day sales operations. Plus we knew that if we got it wrong—if we selected a provider whose capabilities didn’t match our unique requirements—it could prevent us from ever achieving our business goals and objectives going forward. We had been an ESR subscriber for three years and knew they understood the sales training industry and players like no one else. The fact that they were independent meant we could trust them to offer unbiased advice that was focused on our success.
ESR expertly guided us through a comprehensive search process that resulted in the selection of a sales performance improvement provider that we would never have known about were it not for ESR’s extensive knowledge of the sales training landscape. We’re well along in our sales transformation process and could not be more pleased with the results of our decision. ESR has earned my highest recommendation"
Mark Emerson | VP of Sales | Chevron Energy Solutions
“When I joined PR Newswire in October of 2009, I determined that deploying a selling methodology was a critical strategy to help support our company’s growth objectives.
Elevating selling performance with the relevant training, technology, and reinforcement was required and I therefore knew we had to establish a strategic partnership with a sales performance improvement provider. It was critical to our success.
When I looked at the abundance of sales trainers and the failure rate among sales training initiatives, I realized I needed a significant degree of outside expertise to help us make the right decision. I went to ESR specifically for guidance and assistance with identifying, evaluating, and selecting the right sales training partner.
I can’t imagine anyone having a deeper knowledge of sales training companies and their real capabilities than ESR. After performing an in-depth assessment of our business requirements, analyzing and interpreting them, and using those results to drive our selection process, ESR wrote as thorough an RFP as I have seen. They suggested an appropriate long list of potential training firms and, after evaluating all responses to the RFP using an ESR tool, three firms emerged as finalists. At that point we determined that any of the three could get the job done. It was then a question of which one was the best fit.
ESR led us through the selection process, providing a degree of insight, perspective, and leadership that left us with no doubt that we were going about all this in the right way. ESR delivered. Thanks to their methods, knowledge, and unwavering determination to get the job done, they helped to insure that we made the right choice."
Bob Seiler | SVP Sales and Marketing | PR Newswire
“We engaged with ESR to guide us through what would have been a very risky sales training vendor evaluation process. Their knowledge, expertise and commitment to our success enabled us to choose the right long-term partner. I highly recommend the ESR team.”
Gordy Anderson | Director, Global Sales Operations | Genie Industries, A TEREX Company
“ESR guided us through every step of their sales training vendor evaluation and selection process. From their accurate assessment of our sales capabilities, through requirements definition, their unique RFP process, vendor presentations, negotiation support, auditing the live sales training program, and monitoring ongoing progress, they were focused on only one thing: our success. A year later, we had exceeded our sales expectations. We now have the right training partner, the right tools and every salesperson and manager following the same effective process. Without ESR’s help we would be still struggling to find our way.”
Stephen Kahane, M.D. | CEO | AMICAS
“We contracted with ES Research Group to conduct a Sales Effectiveness Audit for our organization. Because we are in a period of extremely rapid and accelerating growth, our concern has been to ensure our long-term viability by assessing what is working and what is not working now, while things are going well, in order to head off any critical issues that may not be apparent until we experience a tightening in the market or increasing competitive pressures.
ESR's CEO, Dave Stein, spearheaded our Sales Effectiveness Audit personally, and we found Dave to be all that we expected: insightful, professional, direct and with a strong desire to see us succeed over the long-term...
ESR’s findings were spot-on and will be very beneficial in charting a course to tackle critical growth related issues before they can have a negative effect on our continued revenue growth... We are greatly appreciative of ESR's efforts and would recommend ES Research Group’s services to any size sales organization.”
Joe Tyres, VP, Global Sales Operations, Medidata
“ESR's Sales Training Vendor Guide is a thorough and objective assessment of the leading sales training firms and their evolving offerings and has added additional areas of relevance. Sales management teams can now easily zero in on both the type of training they need to elevate the performance of their sales people and the short list of vendors to invite into their decision process without having to do all of their own primary research.”
Steve Grossman, Principal and Leader of Mercer's Sales Effectiveness Business in the Americas
"ESR’s Sales Training Vendor Guide provides no-nonsense guidance. This is what sales management, sales operations and sales training directors have been looking for. It shortcuts the harrowing process of figuring out which training companies can get the job done. Covering topics such as technology and post-program reinforcement, the Guide is extremely comprehensive."
John A. Andrus, VP and General Manager, Oracle Tax Global Business Unit
“ESR's CEO, Dave Stein, has as broad and deep a knowledge and understanding of the sales training industry as anyone out there.”
Debbie Masak-Jenkins, Sales Training Manager, Kronos Incorporated
Training Day at Honeywell Business Solutions (Excerpted from a March 2007 featured article in Sales and Marketing Management magazine
Kevin Madden, vice president of global sales at Honeywell Building Solutions (HBS), likes to say that HBS used to subscribe to the "flavor of the month" style of sales training: Try one thing for a while, then try something else. That was the way it was until Madden phoned Dave Stein, president of ES Research Group (ESR) in West Tisbury, Mass.
"I got a call from Kevin and he said, 'We're thinking of going with vendor A, B, C, or D. What's your suggestion?' " Stein says. Stein asked if Honeywell had done an internal assessment. It had not. "I told him I couldn't help him until he completed the assessment," Stein says.
With ESR's guidance, HBS completed the internal needs assessment. "Too many companies end up having three or four sales training vendors over the course of five years," Stein says. "That's because the company doesn't understand its own requirements well enough to be be able to go out and find a vendor that matches its requirements. And there's not a neutral third party to help evaluate the fifteen or twenty sales training vendors out there. We help solve that problem."
Following the assessment, HBS sent out RFPs to a handful of vendors and ended up selecting Performance Methods Inc. (PMI). "We thought that was a good fit," Stein says. "PMI was the perfect solution for Honeywell at this point in time. Honeywell has some real challenges, multiple product lines, a global organization, very tough competitors. HBS needed a vendor that had proven ability to deliver training and consulting services across the globe."
PMI will handle all of the sales-skills training for HBS, but Honeywell will continue to handle the product training in house, based upon ESR's recommendations. "It's too early to measure results, but I believe it's going to be a huge success," Stein says.
Meanwhile, Stein offers up these pointers for companies looking to successfully select and implement a sales training strategy:
- Get executive buy-in and funding before you begin
- Perform a comprehensive and objective self-assessment (or even better, have a third party conduct it).
- Examine how your customers buy, the market, past performance, business goals, resources, etc.
- Create an RFP
- Select a vendor based on its ability to meet your needs, including vendor and program requirements
- Build a performance measurement mechanism
- Engage with the vendor and begin work on a new or updated sales methodology and related processes
- Train managers and salespeople
- Measure the program's progress