Sales Partnerships, Inc., Broomfield, CO, United States: Flipping a higher education learning model for improved sales training

Total 195 words used.

Sales Partnerships, Inc (SPI) provides field-based turn-key sales outsourcing, contract sales, and brand engagement services for Fortune 500 and Global 2000 companies. We engage face-to-face with a brand’s customers while providing complete transparency and accountability. As a specialist BPO company in sales, our calling card has historically included fielding and managing successful teams rapidly while still providing the gold standard for brand protection.

SPI's hallmark is using and inventing systems and processes that optimize all the important areas impacting sales: recruiting, diversity, technology, training, management, analytics, and strategy. We helped establish the standard for field based sales outsourcing services for 25 years. During that time, operating with a national footprint in virtually every MSA, we have generated more than $10B in gross profits for our clients while earning national awards and recognitions (Stevie awards, coverage in Selling Power, CNNMoney, etc.)

SPI's training has won prior awards including top sales process and has been led by winners in the Stevie individual recognitions in the training category. This nomination discusses a fundamental change in how we deliver large elements of that training. Implementation of this model took almost 2 years and thousands of person hours to launch. 

Total 246 words used.

SPI launched a “flipped classroom” that enabled us to more effectively train and coach remotely and on demand while increasing the speed and effectiveness of our training. The term "flipped classroom" refers to it being led at the learner's pace rather than top down at a pace chosen by the instructor. This leverages dozens of learning styles and different speeds of learners to improve enagement.

This new approach to training is a type of fully interactive, blended learning environment that focuses on employee engagement aligned with each learner's understanding levels and learning abilities. This includes: 

• learn-at-your-own-pace instruction
• live coaching, role-play, and group activities with similar skill level peers 
• interactive videos and quizzes
• real-world exercises

The primary goal is to make training and coaching reflect real-world experiences, enabling employees to more easily absorb the information, and apply it to their own jobs more successfully.  By implementing a flip classroom model of training and coaching, we were able to accomplish the following results:

• Expanded our candidate pools by more than 50% by making more new to sales training viable for new hires
• Reduce ramp-up time for new hires to meet quota by 25%
• Saved clients more than a $1 million in training 
• Reduce overall training costs by more than 80%
• Reduce training costs by $2,000 per hire while hiring 226 people in a matter of months
• More than $500,000 in savings just in the first half of 2022
• Improved employee satisfaction and engagement levels in training

Total 116 words used.

The following attachments and links are included to support our nomination:

● Link to an interactive articulate site to let you personally try the flipped classroom approach

● Documentation on SPI’s Flipped Classroom training model

● Case study detailing the field work performed for the nomination for telecommunications where this training was leveraged

● Case study detailing the field work performed for the nomination for financial services sales where this training was leveraged

● Documentation on SPI’s Diversity and Inclusion Work

● Link to the SPI homepage for more information about our organization

Thank you again for your time and consideration for Sales Partnerships for the Sales Training Program of the Year - All Other Industries.

Written answers to the questions

This nomination is a written submission including attachments. We provide information regarding field performance and related systems to give context to this nomination. Being a sales outsourcing provider, we innovate to provide the best solutions to optimize sales performance. We combine proprietary technology with best of breed commercial solutions to help drive sales success. Although most commonly recognized for the proprietary solutions we've created (field enablement and territory management suite, AI integrated metric based recruiting, etc.), the flipped classroom model isn't something invented by SPI. The idea of a flipped classroom originated in college and university settings for graduate level classes. Although growing in academic settings, it is still very limited in use for commerical applications. Sales Partnerships took a concept used in non-sales industries and flipped it (yes, pun intended) to apply in a remote classroom distributed sales model

The nomination includes a link to allow judges to see exactly how a flipped classroom operates with a short interactive training class describing the flipped classroom.

Thank you for your time and consideration of SPI's flipped classroom model for Sales Coaching and Training Program of the year.

Total 250 words used.

The flipped classroom training and coaching model transformed SPI’s approach to training. In short, this new program allowed us to achieve 1) faster results with our training 2) improved overall engagement with the training and subsequent employee performance and 3) a significant reduction in overall training costs. Previously relegated to academic settings, SPI is now one of the few nationwide sales organizations that offer this unique type of flip classroom training, which we hope will become widespread across the industry soon as more organization learn about its cost effectiveness, efficiency, and performance-enhancing capabilities, not to mention the ability to conduct all trainings in a remote environment This model allows for learners to not be bored as concepts are repeated to those who didn't catch them the first time while not losing the learners that need a concept explained differently in classes paced towards the fastest learners. As described above, this approach expanded our recruiting pools, improved initial field performance, while saving on overall training costs. The wider hiring pool allowed us to hire an additional 30% (or approximately 70) candidates that would have otherwise required additional recruiting time to find.

The last benefit of this model and our ability to hire newer to sales individuals is improvements in SPI's diversity. SPI is now 48% diverse - more than twice as diverse as industry averages.

See for yourself what a flip classroom looks like with a custom breakdown of SPI’s approach: https://rise.articulate.com/share/8wkdKo12T5JgUyxnm2sLgovsA1qhRK9r#/ (this link also appears in attachments.)