Good longer-term, ongoing, reinforced, individualized training and development will change behaviors, adjust attitudes and improve skills. For sales people and managers, that means doing the right things, better, and more often. That should impact your top and bottom line performance. How fast and how much can depend on many factors outside the scope of the training program. But all things considered, if the expectations are discussed and agreed to up-front, and then managed and tracked continuously, there should be no question about whether or not your investment is paying off.

Really good sales and management training and development can also impact your bottom line in another dramatic way. We have identified ten Hidden Sales Costs that most likely are not on your P&L, but could represent major cost savings that drop right to your bottom line. You might want to take a few minutes to see if your ROI on sales training and development really could be in that "knock your socks off" level. If so, read on.

The "10 Hidden Sales Costs" You Won't Find On Your P&L

1. Ghosts Bad hires that continue to haunt you and cost you huge sums of money each year.A "Sales Ghost" costs the average company at least 10 times their annual salary over an 18-month period.
2. Ill-Advised Bids & Proposals Lottery Odds do not make for a strong bottom line.Premature proposals lose more business then they get.Many companies don't know their actual costs of doing bids and proposals.
3. Extended Sales Cycles One of the heavy costs you pay for salespeople who cannot control the sales process.In many companies the normal sales cycle is 2 to 3 times longer than it should be.
4. "Let's Pretend" Costs Let's Pretends:Prospect knows it's over-salesperson doesn't (or doesn't want to know).Result: wasted time, resources and money.Big time. One of the most costly of the hiddensales costs.
5. Bad Forecasts, Inflated Pipeline Staff up and build inventory for what turns out to be wishful thinking. Maybe you've found a way around this problem.
6. Marginal Customers Squeaky wheels.Expensive grease. Upgrade them or send them to your competitors and celebrate. Many marginal customers are marginal because you trained them to be.
7. Unqualified Prospects Chasing people who can't or won't do business or pay you. And missing the ones who will.What time management is really all about.
8. Unpaid Consulting If you don't value your services, neither will they.But they'll like you a lot.This is one of the most expensive, profit draining problems that companies quietly suffer with.
9. Unnecessary Price Concessions If you had half of what the average salesperson leaves on the table every year ... well, what would you do with the extra revenue?
10. Wasted Days The latest information shows that on a day-to-day basis, the average salesperson is about 20-30% as effective as they could be.Your sales force could be the most underutilized resource you have.

If you recognized more than 2-3 potential cost savings on our list of Hidden Sales Costs, you could be in a position to enjoy "knock your socks off" cost savings that drop right to the bottom line. Capturing cost savings that are not on your P&L is like discovering "Found Money".

Click on csantalla@sandler.com to schedule a time to talk more.