Sales Effectiveness
As a global leader in logistics, this client approached Pursuit NHA with the challenge of...
...How can we make our European Sales Team more effective at what they do?
The key focus in previous years had been process and cost control. There was a real need to be more effective at what they did.
Key questions that needed to be answered were:
- what is it like to work in a Sales Team in their organisation?
- where and how does the team spend their time?
- what are the critical sales development needs for the team?
- how can the business support the sales team to deliver the sales strategy?
We agreed that the most effective approach would be to review five work streams which included:
- Fieldwork - our team worked with the Field Sales Teams in customer calls across the different channels in the UK. We were then able to benchmark their skills against leading sales organisations. Each salesperson was assessed against clear skill and behavioural criteria
- At the same time we worked closely with the Senior Team to construct a “Sales Team Self Analysis” to understand what it was like to work in sales within the organisation. This generated a number of key actions which included:
Clarifying and communicating the vision and key strategies | |
A real need to develop the Marketing and Product Development | |
Involving the employees in the decision making process | |
Flexing the management style to produce positive results |
- Work study - to understand how time is spent and review areas for productivity improvement. This identified a real need for the Sales Team to spend more time influencing their customers through face to face contact. The management team were also heavily involved in internal meetings and lacked a real focus on coaching their teams
- Development Centres - to identify individual and team needs. These centres were supported by psychometric testing in the form of a Personality Questionnaire and ability testing to give both the delegate and Manager a “full picture” for development needs
- Training - in order to improve the skills and processes of the team, we prioritised their needs as:
Influencing Skills | |
Account Management | |
Negotiation | |
Selling Skills | |
Leadership |