How to Choose Sales Training for Professional Services

TL;DR: The best sales training for professional services firms is ongoing, not a one-day event. Look for an assessment up front, a consultative method that fits how experts really sell, bite-sized sessions with practice, individual coaching, and numbers you can track. Match the program to your size, and expect to see early results within 90 days.

If you lead a law, accounting, advisory or consulting firm, you have probably been pitched a sales training program that promised a lot and changed very little. I have watched firms spend real money on training that nobody used six weeks later. This guide is written from that experience, and it covers how to choose customized sales training for professionals: which format works, which methodology fits, what to measure and which program matches the size of your firm. By the end, you will be able to tell a program that changes behavior from one that only fills a calendar.

Which Sales Methodology Fits Professional Services?

Start with the method, because it decides whether your professionals will use anything they learn. The approach Chuck Polin and I teach combines a customized prospecting approach, strong relationship and credibility building, a consultative selling philosophy, and accountability for executing the plan.

It is built on relationships and expertise, not pressure. A professional learns to ask good questions, help the prospect understand how they might be helped, quantify what the problem is costing the prospect, and then decide honestly whether there is a good solution. It is professional, not pushy.

It also follows a step-by-step process. Because every conversation moves through the same steps, a professional can debrief any meeting afterward and ask whether they uncovered the answers to every question. When they did not win the business, that debrief often shows why. You can see how the steps fit together on our sales methodology page.

Prospecting works the same way: practical and driven by numbers. We start with the real-world goals a professional has, then use the Revenue Cookbook to work backward. How many rabbits (small engagements), deer (mid-size) and elephants (large) need to close? What is the closing percentage? From those answers we build a prospecting plan around the goal.

Every step has a clear next step, so the sales cycle does not become long and confusing. And the plan has to fit around the professional's other day-to-day responsibilities. A great plan on paper is worthless if it cannot be executed between client deadlines.

Which Training Formats Waste Money?

The format that disappoints most often is the half-day, one-day or two-day workshop with no follow-up. These events cost less and take less time, which is why firms buy them. They rarely return much on the investment, for two reasons.

• Too much information in too little time. Participants cannot absorb a whole system in a day and then turn around and use it.
• No reinforcement. If someone has a question afterward, there is nobody to ask. If they try a new technique once and it does not work, they are likely never to try it again.

The same is true of inexpensive one-hour sessions delivered online, with no customization and no interaction. People log in, pay little attention, and a week later the content is forgotten. The firm has checked a box, but nothing has changed.

Which Formats Work Best?

The formats that work are ongoing. Content is taught in bite-sized pieces so people can absorb it, and participants practice between sessions. Role-play with colleagues, follow-up sessions where people share what is working and what is not, and tweaks along the way are how skills turn into habits.

The best programs have four parts.

1. An assessment before anything starts. We look at each participant's strengths, weaknesses and gaps, so the group training can be customized to fill them.
2. Group training in manageable sessions. Concepts are introduced over time, with practice built in.
3. Individual coaching. This is where many breakthroughs happen. A partner who avoids asking for referrals needs different help than an accountant who struggles to qualify prospects. Our ongoing sales coaching supplies the reinforcement and accountability that one-time events lack.
4. Keeping score. Decide which metrics you want to improve before you begin, and track them.

Training shouldn't just be a feel-good event. There should be trackable, measurable results at the end of the training session.

( Evan Polin, Polin Performance Group)

How Do You Show That Training Worked?

There should be no guessing. Track three things: behavior change, leading indicators and lagging indicators.

1. Behavior change

Are people doing things differently? One of the clearest signs is a professional who was not participating in business development before, or not bringing in business, and now is. That is a change in who is doing the work, not just how much.

2. Leading indicators

These are the activities that eventually drive results:

• Networking events attended
• One-on-one meetings with people in your network
• LinkedIn outreach
• Referral requests made
• First meetings with potential new clients

3. Lagging indicators

These are the outcomes: the closing percentage, the amount of revenue brought in, and the size of the clients you are winning.

Set a baseline before the program starts. A partner who held one referral meeting a month and now holds four has changed measurably. Leading indicators move before lagging ones, so a professional may be generating first meetings well before those meetings turn into revenue. If activity rises but results do not, that tells you where to coach next. For the link between follow-up, close rate and return on marketing, see our earlier post.

What Does the Wrong Training Look Like?

I have seen two patterns repeatedly.

Training built for a different kind of selling. One firm hired a sales training company with plenty of experience teaching people who sell products. The methodology was old-school and made sense for selling something like office supplies. When attorneys and financial advisors tried to apply it, it did not fit how they work, and it was not used. Professional services are sold through expertise and trust, so the training has to be consultative.

The cheap, generic one-hour session. Described above: little interaction, no customization, no follow-up, and nothing that stuck.

One more thing to check: has the trainer ever sold? If the person teaching has never done business development themselves, they have no experience to draw on when your people ask a hard question. Ask any provider you are considering about the selling they have actually done.

Which Program Fits Which Firm?

Solo practitioners and individual contributors

For a founder, owner or managing partner, customized individual coaching is usually the best fit. For an individual contributor, a group program works well. Our 12-week sales training program is built for exactly this.

A 20-person firm or a regional firm

For a firm this size, the work follows a sequence:

1. Start with an assessment period. Look at the processes and systems already in place, and where they fall short.
2. Put together a process for the firm.
3. Evaluate each individual in the program so coaching can be customized.
4. Run ongoing group training to teach the skills.
5. Add individual coaching to reinforce skills and create accountability.
6. Track results.

A regional firm with a business development director follows the same path, with the assessment starting from the infrastructure already in place. Our work is designed to support that director, not replace them.

Whatever your size, treat the work as building skills and a process. For firm-wide culture change, plan on a 6 to 18 month investment. You should still see results within the first 90 days: more activity, better leading indicators and more people in the firm taking part in business development.

We work with law firms, accounting firms and financial advisors, and each program starts with how that firm actually wins business.

Key Takeaways

• Choose a consultative method that fits how professionals really sell, and that has clear next steps at every stage.
• One-day workshops and one-hour online sessions usually fail because of information overload and no reinforcement.
• Look for assessments, bite-sized training, practice, individual coaching and accountability.
• Track behavior change, leading indicators and lagging indicators against a baseline.
• Match the program to the firm: coaching for solo owners, group training for individual contributors, a full assessment-to-coaching program for larger firms.
• Expect early results within 90 days and plan for 6 to 18 months of culture change.

Next Step

If you are comparing programs, I am glad to talk through what would fit your firm. Book a consultation with Polin Performance Group and we will start with where your firm is today.

About the author: Evan Polin is a sales consultant and coach at Polin Performance Group, where he works with his father and partner, Chuck Polin, helping professionals build business development skills and a process they will actually use.