The Allegories Blog

This article is a recap of a presentation by Frank Cespedes, Strategy Expert and Senior Lecturer at Harvard Business School, at Allego’s 2019 customer conference. The session was entitled, “Accelerating Learning and Profitable Growth: Aligning Strategy and Sales.” U.S. firms spend over $900 billion annually on their sales forces – three times more than they spend on all media advertising. About $1,500 is spent per rep on sales training, 20% more per capita than to train any other type of employee. Unfortunately, the return on this enormous investment is often disappointing. According... Continue Reading

Ryan Junius isn’t nearly as famous as Jaime Lannister, the “Kingslayer” from Game of Thrones, but he is far more popular than Jamie ever was, especially among sales reps. That’s because Junius, a sales training executive at Legg Mason Asset Management, was responsible for “slaying” the dreaded but mandatory 7:30 a.m. conference calls with Allego mobile videos, earning him the nickname, “The Conference Call Killer.”  And he isn’t alone. When it comes to keeping sales reps updated on the latest market news and trends, content creators at other financial services firms also... Continue Reading

If you were a movie producer, would you ever say this to your actors? “Don’t bother coming to rehearsals. Just be poised and confident in front of the camera. Oh, and be ready to improvise in case the other actors see an opportunity to take the scene in a different direction.” Probably not. Yet when it comes to preparing sales reps for customer objections, that’s exactly what many managers tacitly say: “I know we didn’t practice responses, so just be confident and get ready to think on your feet. You’ve got this.”... Continue Reading

When it comes to national sales meetings or product launch trainings, smaller sales training departments face the same dilemma as one-room schoolhouse teachers: How do you leverage your limited time and resources to train a diverse group of people—all at the same time? If learning content for the event is too advanced, new hires may get hopelessly lost. If it’s too basic, you risk putting the experienced reps to sleep. At large organizations, the simple solution is to divide the reps into different classes, design customized content for each class, and run... Continue Reading