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Training the Modern B2B Sales Professional

With

Paul Fifield

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B2B Sales



B2B Cloud revenue is projected to grow from $300B+ in 2020 to over $800B by 2025. Some estimates highlight the industry will require 300,000 additional B2B Sales professionals to achieve this level of growth. If the above is even directionally correct, being able to train sales professionals is key to continued industry growth. Paul Fifield is the founder and CEO of the Sales Impact Academy. His vision to create the Sales Impact Academy is built upon his frustration in growing and leading revenue teams. Paul says that most B2B SaaS leaders are forced to "make it up" as they go because there is no great source of advice, education, and training for B2B Sales professionals. The first class Paul developed was a  basic "how to build a predictable and scalable revenue function". This was the catalyst for Paul to identify the lack of repeatable models would negatively affect the industry's continued growth. Sales Impact Academy is a "universal best practice" approach to sales training.  By identifying, packaging and training upon proven best practices, the industry will leverage the collective experience and knowledge of those who have gone before. Paul and the Sales Impact Academy approaches sales training with a fundamental belief that the basic process of selling, even in the Cloud, has not materially changed. Sales Management, Sales Leadership, Sales, Prospecting, Marketing, and Customer Success are the six primary curriculum categories across 15 core personas. Revenue Operations will be the next function to be added to the course curriculum. The courses are built primarily for people already "in the job" versus trying to prepare themselves to enter a new job/professional. The goal is to have an immediate impact on job performance Thus, the curriculum is primarily focused on helping people already in the job improve immediately. This requires an educational approach that is "easy for the individual" to take the class, which includes smaller, micro-learning segments that never exceed over 2 hours per week. Every class that Sales Impact Academy delivers is live with a subject matter expert versus self-directed videos. Being able to create a learning program at the scale requires reaching millions of people. This will require a significant improvement in existing digital learning approaches and supporting materials to empower leaders to embed the learning in their local organizations. When asked about "certification," Paul said this is a critical component of their vision to allow every company to be comfortable with the quality and impact of the Sales Impact Academy courses. When asked about ROI, Paul highlighted that the primary ingredient to ensuring a positive return on training is an integrated "feedback loop" embedded in every student's experience.  One exciting aspect of the Sales Impact Academy is that there is no ONE WAY to achieve success. By having multiple subject matter experts deliver their approach from experiences leading to success, no ONE single approach will be trained. Each student will have an opportunity to choose the curriculum and approach that works best for them. Paul highlighted that he is now very focused on the "pedagogy" of their curriculum or their teaching approach. Learning design is key to delivering the optimal training program framework, coupled with subject matter experts to deliver the courses. If you are responsible for scaling your B2B SaaS Go-To-Market, revenue-producing teams and increasing productivity is key to achieving your goals next year and beyond, learning more from Paul and the Sales Impact Academy is a great place to learn a new, innovative approach that your employees will appreciate and your investors will love once they see the results!

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