Gartner recently evaluated Korn Ferry as a Leader in its 2021 Magic Quadrant for Sales Training Service Providers. What does this mean?

Gartner evaluated 16 sales training companies based on two key criteria: completeness of vision and ability to execute.

The Magic Quadrant graphically displays the results of its extensive evaluation on two axes, with completeness of vision on the horizontal axis and ability to execute on the y axis. The axes divide the graph into four quadrants:

• Niche Players
• Visionaries
• Challengers
• Leaders

According to Gartner, “Leaders provide mature offerings that meet market demand and have demonstrated the vision necessary to sustain their market position as requirements evolve. The hallmark of Leaders is that they focus on, and invest in, their offerings to the point where they lead the market and can affect its overall direction. As a result, Leaders can become the vendors to watch as you try to understand how new market offerings might evolve.” [1]

As a Leader, Korn Ferry was positioned the furthest for overall completeness of vision.  Three components of the Korn Ferry offering appear in the report – CRM integration, innovative use of AI and global presence.

CRM integration

Buyers are getting better at buying faster than sellers are improving their sales skills. That means buyers are more self-reliant than ever; they only bring sellers into deals late in the buying process, making it difficult for sellers to differentiate themselves from the competition. To close this gap between buyers and sellers, virtually every organization needs to transform their sales teams in some way. Sellers can start on this transformation journey by offering perspective to buyers: insights and inspiration that offer buyer value, perhaps in the form of reframing their vision for success or rethinking potential solutions, that helps them be more successful.

But sometimes it’s hard for sellers to know what insights will be most meaningful to a buyer or when the right time is to offer those insights. While training on sales methodologies teaches sellers the right behaviors, it doesn’t tell them when to execute those behaviors. But integrating sales methodologies into your CRM shows sellers, in real time, the actions that are most likely to lead to sales success. That integration, available in Korn Ferry Sell, also gives sales leaders and sales managers useful data that informs coaching and development efforts, particularly when that platform delivers just-in-time microlearning and full training modules.

Innovative use of artificial intelligence

To win more deals, sales organizations need to place the right people in the right roles. But fewer than a third of sales organizations believe they have the talent necessary to succeed in the future. Even worse, when hiring, many sales organizations focus on past sales success without considering whether their prospective sellers have the right competencies to excel in the future. That’s often because they haven’t assessed their salesforce to see why their top sellers succeed or what gaps they need to fill in hiring.

These sales organizations would benefit from the Korn Ferry Intelligence Cloud, our artificial intelligence platform that combines market intelligence with our proprietary data to deliver insights into your industry, peers, and best practices. We built the Intelligence Cloud on more than 50 years of data, including 4 billion data points drawn from 70 million assessments, rewards data for 20 million people at 25,000 companies from more than 150 countries, and engagement data on 7 million employees and 400 companies. These data deliver unmatched insights into your organization’s salesforce, including the gaps you need to fill through training, coaching, and hiring.

Using this data we help you make better decisions about your organization leadership and people - to help you move forward on your sales transformation journey. For example, with Accelerating Revenue Growth, we create personalized learning journeys for individual performance improvement. First, we assess your existing sales talent, then identify which talent you need to bring in to fill any gaps. Our Success Profiles define what “good” looks like for sales and sales leader roles, allowing you to benchmark your salesforce and establish individual development needs. Then, using our assessments, you can match each seller to one of eight unique personas that suggest how they learn and work best. After constructing a learning journey for each seller, our system reinforces their training and sales methodology by, as mentioned above, incorporating their new skills in their daily workflow.

Global presence

With approximately 100 offices located in more than 50 countries, and with an in-house expert faculty that’s more than 800 strong, we’re the largest sales and sales leadership development provider in the world. This means we’re able to serve clients on every continent, ensuring they get consistent, scalable training, no matter their language needs or regional differences. And, we’re powered by the proven, industry-leading sales methodology of Miller Heiman Group, which is now part of Korn Ferry.

Ready to transform your sales organization?

Our sales skills and methodology training helps businesses around the globe improve their sales effectiveness and performance. If your sales organization is ready to transform to achieve better results in 2021 and sustain that growth for years to come, get in touch.

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[1] Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.