Reducing the Risk of Sales Hiring Missteps

In 1859, Charles Blondin (born Jean-Francois Gravelet) crossed the Niagara Falls river gorge on a high-wire suspended 160 feet in the air. He was the first person to accomplish this dangerous act and he did it without any safety protections in place (i.e. no net, no secure safety harness, etc).

Blondin’s exploits elevated him to worldwide entertainment fame and cemented his spot in the history books. In more recent times, Nik Wallenda, a member of the famous daredevil “Flying Wallendas” family, completed an even more treacherous tightrope walk by directly crossing over the rushing falls in 2012. The rushing water, the thunderous noise and the slippery conditions caused by rocking river spray significantly upped the ante over Blondin’s exploits more than a century earlier.

These two men completed their respective acts without any back-up plans or safety precautions. That type of “throw caution to the wind” style may play well in the entertainment world, but it’s not a recommended path in business.

Investing in safety and peace of mind is always a smart move.

Blondin and Wallenda needed to work without a safety net for entertainment purposes. But if your sales development team is growing, you don’t have to commit your own high-wire act after you bring a new sales professional onto your squad.

memoryBlue Academy is the perfect way to protect this valuable resource investment.

Peace of Mind for High-Tech Sales Leaders

When we launched memoryBlue Academy, the goal was simple: offer a world-class educational experience focused on imparting the fundamentals of sales development. The curriculum combines proven sales strategies, winning methodologies and best practices together in one place for the benefit of committed students.

This “tour de force” in sales education teaches every participant practical sales development skills by covering all aspects of a lead generation role. Academy training consists of two parts:

1. 1. Boot Camp – A two-day intensive classroom session exposing participants to all of the basic skills needed in a professional sales development role.
   2. Foundations – A six-week continuing education curriculum incorporating a variety of building block tutorial sessions, each of which builds on lessons learned in prior sessions. Some tutorials cover core sales strategies while others focus on executing the tactical aspects of the role.

This is the comprehensive sales training program every single memoryBlue SDR undergoes at the outset of their tenure. The structured learning approach, with repetition and a steady flow of information, yields the highest results as participants rapidly expand their sales tool set and refine their abilities.

But the best-kept secret (until now!) is that the Academy serves as a low-cost way to protect any investment in a new sales hire – it’s not just for our own staff of SDRs.

High-tech companies around the country are sending new sales hires our way in increasing numbers. There are a few compelling reasons why:

• Internal Resource Limitations: Many companies don’t have the personnel on staff who can dedicate time to comprehensive, sales-specific training to internal staff. Peers on a sales team can help ground new hires in the fundamentals of a product or service, and even impart the nuances of company messaging, but it’s rare that they have the time, skills or mandate to train co-workers on sales tactics, best practices and core fundamentals.

• Low Cost: Tuition for memoryBlue Academy is just $1,500 per student. That price includes both the two-day Boot Camp and six-week Foundations portions. Participants receive personalized instructor attention and feedback, not to mention a comprehensive SDR Academy Playbook. The Playbook doubles as both a course textbook (during the class) and a valuable resource students will use as a reference long after the course concludes.

• Sales Training Isn’t a One-Shot Deal: Sales training that produces results is born from repeated lessons, practice and refinement of technique. The Academy curates lasting skill growth as opposed to simply being a fleeting day-long seminar or a few days spent with a paid training consultant. Instructors lead participants through a wide array of sales concepts and bring these lessons to life in a participatory environment. The companies we’re working with don’t have anything like this in place for their sales team.

• Sales Hires Who Wash Out Are Expensive: From the costs associated with finding and replacing team members who don’t make it to the sting of missed numbers due to unfilled sales job openings, it’s painful when a sales hire doesn’t work out. The Academy gives new hires a much better chance at a positive outcome.

Comprehensive Sales Training Creates Fans

We’ve had close to 100 sales professionals start in a memoryBlue Academy cohort over the last three months alone. This includes internal memoryBlue hires as well as external sales professionals. We survey every single student we train to measure our effectiveness, produce course feedback and determine how likely individuals are to recommend the training to a peer.

We carefully track our Net Promoter Score (NPS) for this service and the returns so far are excellent. memoryBlue Academy boasts a whopping +51 NPS in 2019, which is well above the widely held “best in class” bar of a +40 or better NPS.

The training found within Academy serves as an ideal complement to memoryBlue’s Direct Hire practice, as well. While the program keeps hiring fees low, our clients are making important investments as they bring in new talent.

The “nuts and bolts” sales skill building found in Academy serves as the perfect way to augment hiring investments like this and ensure new sales team members hit the ground running.

Dangerous high-wire acts thrill the masses in the entertainment world. But there’s just no need to work without a net any longer when it comes to hiring sales pros.

Contact us today if you’re interested in learning more about memoryBlue Academy. Multiple cohorts start each month, but classes full up quickly!