Salesforce Effectiveness

Sales Effectiveness

200k+ customers • 1500+ employees • $600M+ Revenue

Our client was predominantly a print based advertising business which generated strong revenues for many years. As the world began to go online our client created digital offerings for their customers but over the years, competition strengthen and resulted in steep revenue decline for our client. Our client needed to created a growth strategy and a key enabler was transforming the sales model. As part of transformation the sales teams needed to become more efficient and productive.

Business Impact

⊹ Plan Your Work Week provided a consistent way of working and a transparent structure to the work day across all levels within the Sales department
⊹ Increased the time sales agents spend with customers
⊹ Enabled sales agents to focus on activities valued by customers
⊹ Increased closes per day
⊹ Increased the number of customers contacted per day
⊹ Delivered improvements in revenue and customer numbers
⊹ Reduced customer cancellations

High Performing Sales Culture

200k+ customers • 1500+ employees • $600M+ Revenue

Our client changed their strategic direction to be more aligned to the digital advertising market. They had a large Sales force that was required for handling the customer base but their skills were no longer relevant in the agile, digital environment. They knew in order to be successful in achieving their corporate goals their Sales force required a significant shift in culture.

Business Impact

⊹ Alignment of Sales objectives to Organisational goals, empowering the Sales force with purpose
⊹ Daily stand-up meetings to motivate staff by keeping them informed with progress and celebrating wins, creating healthy competition
⊹ Improved the dollar return value by 3%, equivalent to $25M
⊹ Updated training/capability program provided the required tools to sell in today’s market with digital products
⊹ Improvement in staff retention, resulting in an improved attrition rate of 1%
⊹ Increased number of F2F and Telesales contacts per week delivering greater efficiencies and effectiveness

Aligning Sales, Service & Marketing

200k+ customers • 1500+ employees • $600M+ Revenue

The silos between the sales, marketing and service functions needed to be removed to promote sales effectiveness. There was nobody in the organisation taking responsibility for the end-to-end customer experience. Sales indicated they were taking the lead on customer experience yet revenue (-29%) and NPS scores (-88) were moving backwards every quarter. Marketing insisted that they were listening to the voice of the customer and focused on lead generation however the leads being generated were in verticals the business could not serve. Service had a company leading episode NPS(+12) result however churn (19%) was at an all time high.

Business Impact

⊹ Sales, service & marketing functions aligned on goals, lead definition, and processes.
⊹ Teams now spend their time more effectively on promising leads and conversions have increased with now common dashboards and tools, including engagement platforms to understand customer needs.
⊹ Revenues increased as a result of clear alignment on customer ROI metrics.
⊹ Improved efficiencies as a result of sales & marketing working together to shorten the sales cycle. This included go-to-market strategies based on segmentation, content development, contact strategy, nurturing, engagement, and customer support.

Sales Productivity

200k+ customers • 1500+ employees • $600M+ Revenue

The business had established a highly successful field sales go-to-market model in the mid 1970’s that had not evolved in line with the needs of the modern day digital market. The existing model saw sales representatives operating in within their own schedules, which made it difficult to measure and manage sales activities and conversions. At a micro level, this resulted in a longer sales cycles and saw sales managers only spending around 35% of their total available time in front of customers. The macro impact, as evidenced by data insights, was that two-thirds of sales representatives were not making their quota each year, while the organisation was exceeding their budget for remuneration and rewards because of the disproportionate contribution of top performers. These factors made it difficult for organisation to ensure they have a consistent and transparent sales process.

Business Impact

⊹ Achieved sales results with more efficient utilisation of resources
⊹ Improved performance across sales channels.
⊹ Increased visibility and adherence to sales management activities
⊹ Improved sales adherence to pricing policies and eliminated discretionary discounting practises.
⊹ Increased effectiveness of sales pipeline management and specifically moving prospects through towards conversion and close.
⊹ Differentiated the clients profile in the industry as a best of breed sales business renowned for its sales process.
⊹ Improved customer satisfaction relative to delivering customer ROI.

Protecting the Core

200k+ customers • 1500+ employees • $600M+ Revenue

The client was on a transformation journey, moving from a product-led organization to one with the customer placed at the centre. To enable this, the client had several initiatives underway; including a new customer segment-led sales and service strategy, as well as a new customer experience led approach to workforce planning. Despite these, revenues and margins for their core proprietary assets were continuing to decline

Business Impact

⊹ Reduction in digital acquisition headcount to save $4.2m
⊹ Proprietary asset decline slowed with a 4% improvement in the customer churn rate
⊹ Weighted average gross margin improvement of 2% on proprietary digital products
⊹ Successful stabilisation of the regional customer segment
⊹ Aligned the marketing spend of the business to key customer markets
⊹ Established a series of customer retention and acquisition experiments to rapidly swarm around the customer churn issue