Would you buy this bellweather?

Mass High Tech: The Journal of New England Technology - March 8, 2006

By Patricia Resende

While the jury is still out Was to whether 2005 marked the official return of technology business as a high-growth industry, it was clearly an improved year in both deals and sales over the previous four. And companies seem to be getting ready to take advantage of that expanding market segment by growing their training efforts in the sales department.

While a slim majority of technology businesses see this year as a time to keep steady, nearly half of the companies polled recently by Mass High Tech are planning to put more budget dollars aside for sales training in 2006.

Of more than 150 businesses responding to the survey, 46 percent plan an increase in their sales training efforts, with 49 percent saying they are keeping the status quo.

There has been a slow and steady climb in tech-sector spending since the recession, but a healthy rise between 2003 and 2005 will carry over into 2006, according to the Information Technology Association of America, a trade group in Virginia.

Still, it may not be time to break out the champagne, as U.S. companies are projecting only small budget increases for 2006 and the tech industry is expected to see a roller-coaster 2006 with a small downturn in 2007, according to Forrester Research.

Leslie Fishlock, founder and chief executive of Genevate, a web development and design company in North Falmouth, is planning to grow her sales-training budget this year. Fishlock said she believes strongly in consultative sales and imposes that method on her own employees.

"Because I was in marketing and sales, I learned consultative sales - that's selling without selling," she said.

Still, because Fishlock believes in community involvement, she has custom-designed sales classes for the local chamber, which will benefit the community and her business.

"We are not large enough to have someone come in, so we are relying on bringing education into the community by bringing in a speaker," she said. "As my company grows, I will definitely have the person who does consultative sales training come work directly with us."

Bill McCormick, a sales coach and president of Duxbury-based Sales Training and Results Inc. (STAR), says most web development firms, because of their size, don't use sales training services.

Still, of the Internet companies that responded to the Mass High Tech survey, 60 percent say they are increasing their sales training and none say they plan to cut back on training. Larger businesses in the software, IT, and telecom sectors, however, have been seeking STAR's training over the past 16 years.

Some years have been tough, but overall the need for training is coming back, according to McCormick.

"Overall, there is no question that the demand is more this past year than (the previous) year," McCormick

said. "Overall, we saw in increase."

And 2006 is already looking better, he said, because STAR has seen more sales booked for the first quarter of 2006 than the same quarter 2005.

Bill Murray, trainer and chief executive of Winning Inc., a provider of training services, said he sees a high demand for the coming year.

"I don't see a slowdown at all," Murray said. Already bookings for the first quarter 2006 are 40 percent higher than that of 2005 for his Wellesley Hills-based company.

"I see an increase across the board (with all sectors), but the strongest being in software."

According to the survey, software companies are most likely to expand their sales training with more than 52 percent of responders saying they would increase expenditures, 42 percent saying they would remain the same and only 5 percent planning to decrease training.

Michael Zola, vice president of sales for LiveData Inc., a provider of real-time management, said there will be a huge push in house to increase sales training. Cambridge-based LiveData, which sells its software to the utility industry among others, is now moving into health care by putting real-time management "dashboards" into operating rooms. These dashboards provide real time views of data from various systems and devices display on the wall for work flow and patient safety.

"As far as sales, we are really pushing the health-care industry, and since it's a whole different market, it's a whole different sales effort," Zola said. "And when you are only in one vertical, (customers) don't think of you outside that box."

Technology businesses have also learned that all employees who interact with potential customers need to know how to sell the service or product - and that has become part of Genevate's philosophy. All six employees at Genevate, whether they are in programming or in sales, sell the product in some way. That's important, agrees STAR's McCormick.

"We've always made recommendations that if you want the greater impact and results, involve anyone who interacts with the customer," he said.

"What we teach and coach people on a selling system is what most clients we work with want - that idea (that everyone sells) ingrained in their culture across the board and (having) everyone speaking the same language so everyone is working the same way," said Winning Inc.'s Murray.

Zola agreed, saying its part of the preaching at LiveData that "everybody is in sales."

Patricia Resende is a freelance writer based in Bristol, R.I.