"Product Training that WorksTM"

Intel's Operation Crush. When Intel launched the first in their family of Pentium processors, they consistently lost 9 of 10 design-ins, for six consecutive months. Having invested over 20 million to promote it, and forecasting no improvement to their win rate, they hired an "outsider" --Liston--to teach their sales force how to beat their arch-rival, Motorola.

To identify the root causes of their losses, Liston went on sales calls with Intel's reps, soon identifying the issues. He then created a new approach to training by integrating the X86's advantages into a more sophisticated sales strategy; one that apparently became the basis of "Strategic Selling," the best-seller written three years later by authors Miller and Heiman.

Liston delivered his new training to 75 sales managers who then taught it to their reports. Intel's win rate rose immediately and dramatically, and within 90 days, achieved a 75% win-rate, causing Motorola to begin reacting to Intel, which had never before happened.

Following these wins, Intel won the most important sale in the history of the computer industry, the CPU for IBM's Personal Computer. This campaign, known as "Operation Crush," is documented in William Davidow's best seller, "Marketing High Technology."

For Intel, the new highly effective product-specific sales training made the critical difference. Liston's new approach to training was documented a few years later in Training Magazine, after Intel's NDA expired.

In 1990, Seagate Technology acquired CDC's disk division. Surprisingly, this resulted in a product lineup which was so confusing that sales dropped 50% in the first 30 days. Liston was tasked to create new training to remedy this problem and deliver it to 130 distributor sites within 6 weeks.

Liston used his proven method of building the product training around the selling process, then compiled only the specs needed to sell each drive in a new sales guide. The new guide eliminated 85 slides of drive "feeds and speeds." The new training task consisted of just showing the Channel reps how to use the guides and running them through a few sales. .

This training really "moved the needle." After only one 45 minute training sessions Channel reps started having positive, confident, and higher-margin selling experiences. And since this is what every sales rep really wants--consistently positive selling experiences, the Channel "defaulted" to selling Seagate, generating steadily increasing market share--without having to "buy" it with the lowest prices or best spiffs.

From that training campaign, Seagate's Channel share rose 21 points, from 33% to 54%, in two years. This increase in market share also put over a hundred competitors out of business. Once they could not sell against Seagate on the basis of price, they could not sell.

NEC Computers had scheduled $10 million of print advertising to kick launch of their new 120-person consultative phone sales team, starting with a series of full-page ads in the Wall Street Journal. However, with the launch date only a month away, their new team's sales training had not worked. After six weeks of 10-hour training sessions, their reps still could not configure a system, even a basic one. With tens of millions at stake, Liston was to make their training work. A different kind of problem existed here; once fixed, their sales team "got it" -- becoming highly effective at configuring systems to meet specific needs in minutes.

NEC's new training, which also integrated product information into their sales process, took 50% less time, delivered the needed knowledge and skills, enabling NEC to launch their new sales division on time. Product training---built into their selling processes -- saved the day for NEC.

Adobe Technologies could not get the Channel to use their carefully designed and highly effective long-term agreements. Powerful sales tools, their agreements locked-in a customer's business for up to three years. Adobe had been trying for eight years to get the Channel to use them, but the Channel just did not "get it."

After the Liston Group de-mystified how and when to use each one—as well as showing the Channel what was in it for them--the Channel suddenly started using them. Adobe used the Liston-designed training as the centerpiece of their next year's reseller campaign, increasing the Channel's use of long-term contracts by 400% over the previous year.

The new and greatly simplified training was based on a familiar phrase; "Door Number 1, Door Number 2, ....making their contracts an easy concept to grasp, and then spiking their Channel revenues. At the end of the fiscal year, their Channel sales broke all previous record, by a huge amount, giving them a record year of profits--profits they soon used to acquire Macromedia and other leading companies. .

Liston is granted patent pending status for a critically important business process; Creating the Desire to Buy. Creating the desire to buy is the central skill every sales course claims to have, yet none has ever stated explicitly the steps needed to make this happen. Armed with this easy to learn process, sellers may now sell virtually any product or service faster, more effectively, and at higher margins than ever before. It is a simple four-step process that virtually anyone can follow.

Articles

Liston has authored 35 editions of sales guide for Seagate, Quantum, Samsung, and Fujitsu printing over 1 million copies in three languages. He was the key source for a Sales and Marketing Magazine article on how to train international sales teams;Small World, Big Challenge.

He authored the only article on product training ever printed, Product Training That Works, in Training Magazine. These articles are on our Downloads page.