Recently I had the pleasure of speaking at Richardson’s event in Philadelphia. Richardson (www.richardson.com) is a top sales training company and focuses on sales performance and business impact for their clientele. I also had the honor of learning more about this 32 year old company from their senior management team and in meeting the founder, Linda Richardson.
Richardson has positioned itself as a sales performance company to a core audience of senior sales, HR, and talent executives. This conference was quite exciting for me because it was a blend of executives in different functions, which is unusual for a conference that focused on performance improvement. I gave a presentation and a workshop for close to 100 people with titles including Chief Learning Officer , VP’s of HR, Learning, Talent, Sales, Sales Effectiveness, and Marketing which allowed me a unique opportunity to connect with top individuals focused on improving performance.
Two years ago, Brandon Hall Group predicted that the traditional focus of HR and Learning would become more focused on things that actually matter, including increasing revenue and profitability, as well as a renewed energy in driving revenues from the traditional sales and marketing organization. For years HR and Learning have battled for a seat at the table, especially when it comes to budgets, and although these departments still face some of this battle today, that time should be coming to an end as companies continue to focus on performance improvement.
For those of you who would like to view the slides at this conference, Richardson has posted them here: http://www.richardson.com/Client-Forum/Client-Forum/.
At the Richardson event I had the opportunity to speak with a number of people across various roles and functions in organizations, but for all of them, the main focus is on business results. Major changes have been made in tracking and measuring information related to sales and training, and this information is a game changer. As information is more available, and easily tracked, this creates great opportunities for organizations. Every part of the organization wants to see results that prove what they are doing makes a difference in the marketplace.
As an analyst firm, we have seen ourselves at a number of recent events. This is certainly an interesting time to be an analyst firm because we get to learn more about companies and most importantly, the clients who are working to improve their organization’s performance. What is most exciting is that this event confirmed that we have an opportunity to provide more value to our clients based on the pace of change and the new mindset leaders have in working with the key areas in their businesses that drive performance, HR, talent management, learning and development, sales effectiveness, marketing impact, and executive management. For Brandon Hall Group, we believe these are the optimal ways to drive performance for our clients. As my presentation alluded to at Richardson, these areas should no longer be considered separate silos in order to better contribute to the overall health and profitability of an organization.
