Force Management Reviews

I attended an offsite Force Management training my very first quarter as a sales rep. That training completely laid a foundation for me on how to manage an opportunity. "The Mantra" is an incredible boiled down template that any sales rep can take as a baseline about how to guide a sales conversation. The training gave me a structure and a vision for how to sale. I broke the record at my company for first year sales, and I definitely believe that Force Management was an important piece of my development as a sales rep.

After succeeding in sales, I became part of the management team at my company. About a year after joining the management team, my company decided to place a massive emphasis on coaching reps better. Force Management trained the entire leadership team on how to be effective coaches. Again, Force Management has helped to give me a structure and a vision. I know have foundational knowledge on how to coach that will impact me for the rest of my career.

I am a different salesperson and leader because of the Force Management trainings I have had. It is incredible how much prep work Force Management put in with my leadership team prior to the trainings to make sure the trainings were incredibly tailored and relevant. The presentations we content rich and engaging. The handouts were meaningful resources that I will reference. The LMS trainings we received after the first training were so impactful, I went through them twice.

I LOVE FORCE MANAGEMENT! I feel that my career has been fundamentally impacted by what I have learned and now as a sales leader, I'm fortunate to have an arsenal of good principles from Force Management to teach to my own reps.

I really cannot think of something I disliked.

I would recommend having Force Management training your entire sales team periodically. Their leadership training was awesome too, but I for me their "Command the Message" sales training was something that was extremely game changing and also unique from other trainings. I believe that the sales training is where they have the most expertise.

For me personally, John Kaplan told me that I am the consciously competent leader and the sales process/interaction comes innately to me; however, what I love the best is that the Force Management framework now allows me to teach it to reps of all experience and increase their ability to ramp quickly.

Like any good sales team, we are competitive and can be impatient. Adoption is always a challenge in any sales transformation so if they could sell a magic potion that would scale and generate adoption quicker I would buy it.

I don't provide reviews often; however, this was an easy one for me to do as I genuine have loved my experience in working with Force Management. They are polished and can back up everything they do given a lot of their Sr. folks come from a desk and have years of selling experience. They do such a great job of teaching what the components of a value based framework are and make it easy to share with your sellers.

One of my favorite things about Force Management's style is it is very principle based. They teach principles that can be applied in many different situations. Most other sales organizations I have worked with focus on teaching simple tactics that aren't always good for all situations but are taught as though they could be. Force isn't "gimmicky" and teaches you how to communicate. I loved that.

In both cases the training was quite exhaustive. I felt completely tired leaving and didn't feel like the reinforcement post training was always as strong. That might be more on how my organization deployed the training more than their training style to be fare.

You should plan on doing continual work with them. They are expensive and aren't something you can do once or twice. You need to plan to make a continual investment with them to really get what you need out of it. With that said, it is more worthwhile than any other training I have been to.

Super relevant - FM clearly practice what they preach as their discovery process had uncovered real pains, challenges and goals of the revenue organisation. FM have expertise within the sectors they target. I felt like the team knew the business I was working for intimately.

Every session was engaging and inspiring.

I am sure all of the leads in the FM team are exceptional, but, we had legendary John Kaplan (think Tony Robbins more inspirational twin!)

I genuinely didn't dislike anything related to FM. The only downside I can think of is that after working at a FM enabled organisation it makes future organisations who haven't benefitted from FM consultation extremely difficult to work at as they so often struggle with challenges you know FM solve.

I cannot recommend FM enough - I feel like I owe so much to the team at FM who continue to provide support and advice to me both directly via email/skype as well as via their excellent content on their website, YouTube channel and Podcast.

Genuinely if you are considering FM and would like to talk to me further about my experience please don't hesitate to reach out to me.

A very clear and detailed company specific outline of what your company does, how they do it differently, and how to speak the same language from marketing to sales. Puts a very crisp edge on how your company competes and wins in the marketplace. Excellent presentation by Brian and his team as well.

It is a lot to wrap your head around, but it's more of a behavioral change than a "dislike". If you commit to following the process you will see results. Also, reinforcement of the principles can be spotty unless you have management's adherence to it as well as inputs into CRM about what fields are necessary to verify that adherence.

They are an expensive solution, but truly game changing, especially if you are at a point where you are entering a new market, changing a product, going after a new vertical, etc. Don't discount them as "just another sales training" as it is anything but. They take the time to truly learn your business and customize the materials and messaging specifically towards what you seek to achieve.

The Force Management approach is much more than simply implementing a superior sales and qualification process, it is an entire operating model for effective sales management and consistent sales execution. They are the gold standard for a complete management operating rhythm and effective sales model that sticks!

I can’t point to anything that I didn’t like about the Force team or their approach. Very thorough; from assessing our needs all the way through to implementing the model.

I have been through a half dozen sales methodologies over the last 2 decades and can easily say that this one is the best I’ve ever experienced. The investment was well worth it, not only in the return that we saw, but in the ongoing people development that the approach drove. It is the “stickiest” methodology I’ve ever seen and will carry this discipline with me wherever I go.

The framework Growthplay has helped us incorporate into our conversations is simple, intuitive and able to be applied immediately whether with new reps or seasonsed veterans. It is a framework we have been able to utilise both internally and externally whenever we need to unlock and insights and value

Nothing although some reps would prefer that the training engagements be distilled to shorter nugget sessions rather than the full 1.5 days of the normal training. Personally I would like to see more detail!

Ensure that the leadership and key executive stakeholders buy into FM and are driving this at every engagement. Without exec and management buy-in your reps will not take this on and incorporate this into their sales DNA. FM is something that needs to be practiced and executed against every day not just some of the time.

Force Management’s commitment to learning our business and implementing vital criteria, culture, and technological requirements to the process has been key to the success of our partnership. They know our business, and their knowledge of our sales and engineering processes has been key in defining our value messaging. Ultimately, this process has allowed us to articulate what differentiates us from our competitors and go after high volume, high margin business.

As a select number of individuals at Force Management work on our account and have taken the time to learn our business, we sometimes have to wait for those select individuals to be available to work on these programs with our global sales force. However, it pays its dividends tenfold and is worth the investment in both time and money.

Solution is very well thought through and customized to the organization. Their methodology to get buy-in for the program and its content from the CEO to the VPs, directors and individual contributors.

The process is very involved and requires a lot of hours, but the results make it worth it.

Force Management, like any other sales methodology, requires ongoing commitment from the entire organization. Growth Play (the company behind FM) will help you with this process, but it requires ongoing commitment from within the org.

How to pick? Their methodology is solid and proven and *works*. Their frameworks make it practical to teach at scale. Their team is engaging, credible, and effective. They're great to work with and truly effective.

Some of their materials are a bit dated and kludgy in format - fonts, graphics.

Be willing to adopt their methodology and core training principles. If you just want someone to help you deliver your current approach - you won't get the value.

Compared to other vendors in this space, Force Management strikes the perfect balance of providing structure, guidance, and best practices while still enabling the client to build it in their voice with focus on their customers' needs.

Getting internal budget approval can be challenging if Finance insists on the lowest bidder because they are not the least expensive, but the value is there and the results are worth it!

Their methodology and your content will drive business results, i.e. revenue, market penetration, improved win rate, etc. To get their Force Management will bring their A Game every time, you need to have your A Team on this project and have executive sponsorship to be successful.

A clear structure that WORKS. The fact that we had to build it ourselves was critical to getting the buy in from executive level as well as from the reps themselves.

More geared to medium and large opps. I think its a challenge to apply the framework to SMB and BDR roles, so we have adapted a 'lite' version for this purpose.

A far superior program to other short courses. Often, reps will start the course by shrugging their shoulders at being forced to attend yet another sales training course. By the end of the program, they are grateful for the time investment they made to learn a new way to approach sales.

I thought the trainer we had was outstanding. After 3 full days of listening in a lecture hall, I was still interested in the content. The training was very interactive, and we had a chance to apply what we had learned to an actual deal. We also had a good amount of material to take with us and practice - All of which I still use today.

The trainer had been researching our company and industry for the better part of 3 months. I think this is why this remains the best sales training I've received. With that, a lot of the examples were out of date (ie printers and hardware examples). But at the end of the day, it's all sales and was still applicable.

Training is often as good as the trainer you're working with. In this industry, it takes a hell of a trainer and program to gain confidence. We got a great one, and my experience was fantastic.

Their effective communication and their thorough approach to the issues you are facing and the sales marketing strategies they are suggesting you implement.

There is lots of information thrown at you in one go and it can be a bit difficult to get in to it. Their process is so thorough that the information they provide you with can be hard to digest at first but this will always be the case when creating a new sales management strategy for any company.

Anyone looking for a comprehensive sales strategy revamp then these guys will provide an excellent service.

The materials are incredible. I wish I had those when I started! But the real highlight was the two day Command of the Message and Command of the Sale training. We had 50 people from across the organization sitting at rapt attention for two full days. I have never in my career seen that kind of enthusiasm for a two day training.

I asked a lot of questions up front and asked for examples but it was still hard to fully understand what was going to happen and be produced until we were in it. I would have done things slightly differently in hindsight.

* Integration with other parts of the organization (marketing, product management, technical team)

* Quality of instruction

* Quality of supporting materials, worksheets, interview guides, etc.

* Ability to certify our internal people to teach the methodology and skills

Not a dislike, but the approach is well suited to enterprise level account managers and organizations that are ready to scale. I'm not I would recommend to a very small vendor just trying to get started. You should probably have implemented an initial functional organizational structure.

Think about the interaction with other parts of your organization besides sales and your ability to continue the training/enablement with in-house personnel.

They are not just another sales training company, they really are a game changer! They were very attentive, and really got to know the business well and help tailor the materials to the goals you have already set. The investment was well worth it, and you will see that with the increase in sales and client satisfaction.

There isn't anything I can think of at the moment, was a wonderful experience and something that I would recommend to others!

It's worth it to give it a go the service has helped drastically.

The entire approach is ideal for organizations that have a high-value proposition and are looking to translate that value into the sales process and ultimately the customer. If an organization does something "better", than the competition, Force Management is the best way to articulate this in a consistent and repeatable way.

This is a fundamental shift, which requires complete buy-in almost from the get-go. There's no "slow drip" option. While this is a strength, it's an initial challenge--especially where there's a curmudgeon factor.

I really liked that Force Management came early to work with management to develop a program that was specifically tailored to our sale. I also liked that they provided deliverables to take home with us - those have been super useful as time went on.

Not too much to report here, but it would have been helpful to have some more materials directed at the SDR team, as there wasn't much specifically for them.

I STILL use many tactics I learned from Force Management, years later. In particular, the value card methodology has been instrumental in my success! I lead the prospect through discovery, and ask the tough questions to help them quantify.

Unfortunately, the only real drawback was that the trainers we had did not come from a software / SaaS / tech sale. While the saying goes that good sales motion is consistent regardless of vertical, I feel someone coming from a space similar to ours would have been able to apply the principles with even more success.

Check the credentials of the consultants leading your particular training.

Value Menu/Cards presented simple, repeatable and proven methods that were customizable to our processes. The result was a quick time to value and a methodology that I’ve used in several orgs since.

It’s hard to find a piece that I dislike, but the simple methods require configuration for an orgs process and value proposition. This takes time away from selling if your org doesn’t subscribe to the methods, but the ROI is quick.

CoM (building strong business cases) and CoT (building strong coaches among or management team).

If I had to choose, I would say that there should be more work with your certified instructors. Would love to continue to learn and grow my skills so that I can better enable the teams.

Highly skilled team that is proficient in every way: content build-out, project management, content expertise, etc.

I like the fact it doesn't necessarily apply to just one team/department. Examples can be applied to all kinds of different situations. Very flexible.

The training can be quite tiring other than that there wasn't anything i disliked.

I wouldn't hesitate. Well conducted and produced. They've given me condifence in my role that I didn't have previously.

Honestly, I think the best part of was understanding the CoM framework. It's simple, but not many people think this way. Once you understand it, you get a "wow" feeling. It really is impactful to having your team think about selling in a different way.

I think we made the mistake of trying to cram too much information in a two day training. We tried to cover CoM as well as MEDDICC, which was too much. Should have saved MEDDICC for another time.

Ray Avila is a fantastic trainer, request him!

To my knowledge, Force Mgt. is still the only sales methodology vendor that works with you to specifically align their methodology with a customer's products/services. I.E. - Here's exactly how you sell what you sell with their methods - the Value Framework.

After some time in the relationship they can get complacent and stop selling the way they teach.

Changing the way I work and think for the better. the Force Management course has definitely set a foundation for me and will use going forward in my career. I love that I'm winning the incentives at work!

The training session can be a little long and your attention span may veer off at times. But stick in there as it's money in your pocket for the long run in your career.

Very helpful and useful in your daily working life. It will help you maximise sales.

Structure of learning, mindset shift. Natural progression from conceptual understanding of why it is important, to structured thinking and connecting ideas, to immediate execution and playbooks.

Requires rigorous inspection and follow through with sales leadership, regular updates to messaging as products change or as market direction is adjusted.

Ensure that you have buy in from the top of the organization down to enforce behavior change across the organization. It's easy to let a significant invest stagnate when those at the top aren't adopters of at least the terminology as part of driving your business.

Excellent, energetic moderator who kept everyone involved and on their toes throughout 2 days of training. Detailed, well-organized materials to accompany the sessions and take away afterwards. A simple but structured methodology for taking control of any Sales interaction and leading it on your own terms, to everyone's benefit. Focused on genuinely creating mutual value rather than persuasion.

The chart showing the different tasks that needed to be created at different stages of Qualification was very much over-engineered. There were ~ dozen + at every stage, which is just not realistic or practically helpful.

A business partner fully aligned with us

I can honetly not think of a single dislike

Game changing for me. Aligned cross functions, drove common words and meanings throughout both PTC and Catchpoint while delivering on the goals we were out to achieve such as increased deal sizes, shortened cycle length and overall sales rep/organizational productivity.

They are incredibly thorough in their training process. Will a full 2 days of rep training, with role-plays included, they really want to make sure it sticks, and it has.

Long days in training. Not enough breaks. This can be pretty mentally draining.

They are the best in the industry.

The ability to have a structure of questions that you can follow with specific wording that relates to our business

After the first interaction with the client, we don't have many resources of questions or next steps that could make us more successful and bring urgency

The principles of FM is what drives them, every session had me engaged and focused. The amount of resources that are available for a vast array of situations and challenges.

I honestly didn't have much I disliked, some team members commented on the length of some the sessions, can be a bit much and requires some enthusiasm to push through.

Just prep your team for some real work to make things easier in the long term. It will pay off.

This process has been built, executed and quantified by thousands of successful business executives and sales teams worldwide. The strategies, methodology and process supports the most complex solutions. Value based solutions vs commodity products.

There was nothing to dislike, you have to asdjust out of your comfort zone.

The energy from the instructor (Tim) was contagious. He was great and used real world examples. There was also a lot of practice which really helped the material stick.

Nothing. I thought the whole training was on point and extremely helpful.

The content/takeaways they guided our team to build. While this took a long time for our teams to put together, it is incredibly valuable as a reminder to the current team and as a training resource to future team members.

The training includes many anecdotes, which is great, but sometimes took away from the content. A more engaging approach or demonstrated role play would have been helpful to get a real life example of how this is used in different situations.

We really liked how they guided us through the entire process and really took the time to coach our team on the methodology.

I cannot say anything bad about force management. We had an overall great experience with them!

They are a great team to work with!

Deep, consistent, proven experience. Along with super high integrity people who really spend the time understanding our business

They are busy. Plan ahead for your engagement. It won’t be cookie cutter, they need time to dig deep before delivery

It’s a good thing. I’m just impatient ;)

Understanding what our value drivers are and how to put together a compelling presentation

Would have loved to see examples of winning presentations from other companies or ForceManagement themselves.

If you want to scale your B2B salesforce, increase deal size, increase win rate, use these guys.

The personal attention to the project, the relevant and actionable concepts.

Need more exercises that are relevant to inside sales.

Ask lost of questions, share with them your challenges and goals. Be relevant and involved in the process, also involve your team members.

The outcome of having a value based framework we can propagate across the org is extremely valuable. I'm hoping we can easily onboard people onto it, especially sales/marketing.

The initial workshop felt a bit disorganized and dragged on.

Ray is AMAZING! Also the catch phrase of "No Delta, No Deal!" really drives home the importance of unsurfacing a painpoint that we can actually provide valuable help for.

It was a TON of setup work before getting to the training sessions. Again, grueling....but by the end completely understood that all of the work really does pay off.

Make sure you coordinate this during a time that you can dedicate significant amount of time and focus to

Our teams certainly communicate with prospects and customers in a more purposeful value based discussion.

Given the amount of content that FM delivers, I believe it should either require a longer training schedule or cut down on amt of content in a single day session. There are critical pillars of FM methodology that I believe can be lost or not fully understood when there is so much to cover in such a short time.

The 3 days Training was an amazing experience full of take away points and it was easy to apply what we learned immediately

Some of the content can be difficult to understand if English is not your first language

The training was challenging, informative, and relevant throughout. It established a common vocabulary across all customer-facing positions to ensure consistency in qualification and messaging with pre and post-sales customers.

I honestly can't think of anything I disliked.

Personal interaction and Dave's involvement with the class along with knowledge of industry that directly correlates to specific sales situations.

Nothing at all to dislike . Perhaps some summary followup would help implement program down the road.

I liked how organized the training was.

It is a hard concept to understand when you are first starting out in sales.

It will help you stand out in a saturated market.

Repeatable process and, as a sales director, I can coach and contribute to progress with field teams

Our implementation combines some other concepts, and the administration for field teams can sometimes be involved.

The Force Management team and how they interacted with our sales team.

Really not much to dislike. Force Management is extremely professional and customized their framework to us.

Highly recommended! Great People!

Simplified structure, a playbook to help you win and retain the business at hand.

I have not bad to say about FM - They have been instrumental in growing my career

There were so many frameworks that are easy to understand and use.

I do not have anything that I do not like about this org.

I love how easy it is to implement and how quickly you see results. Adding MEDDPICC to deals gives you a north star to follow and allows you to forecast your pipeline and set client success up for what to look for in renewals.

I don't really have anything that I dislike. Force Management changed my career.

Practical and interactive, very engaging

nothing, It's the best training experience

really great for alignment and sharing a common language and goal

There is always something of value you can be working on, and there is quite a bit of practice required for mastery.

There is a line between the eductional process and reality. It's important to remain flexible and do not deviate from what makes you a unique sales rep, while incorporating the value of Force Management.

I like the focus on the customer's current state/negative consequences. It has helped me be more thorough at understanding a customer's business and finding more pain in opportunities.

There is nothing that I disliked about Force Management's training. Other than the large setting, but that was due to our company not Force.

John Kaplan is one of the most engaging and inspirational trainers I have worked with. What we do matters and who is doing this!?

Difficult to pinpoint this, but perhaps a John Kaplan podcast would be a great addition, from a motivational perspective would be good to have audio takeaways to review.

The multi media, in person, Web POD Casts, Web tests and personal coaching sessions bring this entire program together.

Change! Program will force you out of your comfort zone but 12 weeks after the start of the process I can see the difference it is making.

David was fantastic. He is a master at this game.

There is a risk that the materials get diluted at this speed

Have a distinct set of goals

Make sure all key management is available

Don't dilute messages due to time pressure

The staff was incredible and the delivery was very impactful

The content can feel a bit dense at times, and hard to absorb, but the more practice we had, the easier it got!

The opportunity to Improvie sales performance and aligning company around consistent messaging.

It was a challenging process to get alignment by the team, but we got there!

Use the Force.

Focused, outcome-oriented, professional, relevant, engaging materials, process and consultants

No issues to note - might have added another day of hands on training to give team more time with Force Management

Developing the products along the way. It helped us to understand what the products would actually do.

Slides are so 1990s. There are much better way to facilitate knowledge delivery

The focus on making materials sales consumable and useful for a broad range of reps and managers.

At the current moment, there is nothing to state as unsatisfactory.

The delivery of the training was highly engaging.

Although the content, trainers and and experience was fantastic - in practice it was difficult to drive immediate ROI.

IT was a quick class and to the point. i enjoyed John.

none, i would recommend this company to other staffing companies

questions to ask! i LIKE THE STRATEGY OF DIGGING DEEPER.

NO DISTINCTION BETWEEN SDR MEETINGAS AND INBOUND MEETINGS

The structure and flow of the sales process.

Not much, could be more positioned for inside sales.

Positive Business Outcomes - problem solving.

no differentation between inbound set meetings and outbound set meetings.

deal qualification, consistent messaging

Understanding FM language for new people