Updated: February 2023
Case Study – Multinational Client B2B team
In February 2020 – before many of us knew we were not going to be able to work in person face-to-face over 2020 and 2021 – we were contacted by the Vice President – Sales & Business Development of ACG, a multinational supplier to the pharmaceutical and healthcare industry. One of their four divisions was looking to become one of the top players in the world for their category and to achieve that they needed to raise the level of professionalism in their sales team and leaders including transitioning from transactional to true solution selling, achieving higher conversion rates and share of wallet, building client centricity, increasing customer loyalty, and creating sustainable learning practices leading to sales mastery. Previously they had delivered traditional 2-day sales training events that had not delivered the uplift in sales capability and results they were looking for.
After several meetings and preliminary consulting work with senior management, they chose to adopt Barrett’s Selling Better Sales System Solution. Barrett tailored a sales system solution that suited the business and would achieve the results they wanted.
The work
We officially kicked off the project in January 2021. Together, we developed their sales strategy and value proposition, captured and mapped their sales process, and based on those, facilitated a 4-month remote training program with all sales teams across the globe – India, China, Europe, North and South America. The sales leaders received training and coach-the-coach support for 9 months ensuring they lead and help embed the learning, tools, and processes with their salespeople.
Embarking on such a change journey can be challenging at the best of times, however the global supply chain crisis, price increases of up to 90% for their raw materials plus the Covid waves in the second half of 2021 created an immense challenge for the sales teams, who found themselves working extremely hard to not only to retain customers and margins, but to also find new customers and opportunities in a largely disrupted market environment while working, for the best part, remotely. Degree of difficulty – extreme.
However, despite the adverse circumstances, the confidence and sales mastery developed from the Sales Essentials training program, plus the continuous and dedicated engagement from the sales leaders to thoroughly and systematically coach and support their sales teams, contributed to outstanding sales results.
Feedback and stories from the (virtual) field
Salespeople found by using the human-centred sales practices taught in the Sales Essentials training program they were able to impove the effectiveness and quicken their sales conversion rates markedly. One salesperson reported closing out a US$1.5M deal with a new client in 3 meetings over 2 weeks that would normally have taken 3-5 months, and all without discounting. Others reported being able to get around price objections and increase the size of deals by simply creating the space to really listen to clients and not be afraid to explore what was really happening for them, thus building more robust healthy client relationships. It was noted by European clients that the salespeople from this business were different from their competitors; they were easier to deal with, more consultative, and solutions-oriented compared to their transactional competition and this was winning them more and better business. There are many stories from the field like this. Salespeople grew in confidence and really responded well to the iterative, interactive, and applied interval training approach delivered.
Testimonial
From the Vice President – Sales & Business Development: “They [the sales teams] have had some of the best two months in the all-time history of the division (Dec 21 & Jan 22), we have finished the year with the greatest sales ever. The last four months [of 2021] they have been working extremely hard with their customers, and they’re going to see the best profit we’ve seen in about four years at each of the sites, and the greatest revenue.
“Despite ACG finishing the financial year down on volume by 6%, they have increased their sales revenue by 16% and their profitability has grown by 15% compared to the prior fiscal year. “
Award
In November 2022, ACG Films & Foils won Gold at the prestigious TISS Leap Vault CLO Awards – in the ‘Best Programme for Sales Enablement’ category at the CLO Chief Learning Officers Summit, India for the ‘Beyond Barriers’ sales capability-building programme.
Remember, everybody lives by selling something.
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