Improving Enterprise Sales Performance

Client Profile: US public multi-national high-tech corporation • Dominant, global market leader
Customer Base: Large enterprises • SMBs • Consumers • Systems Integrators • Solution Providers • Service Providers
Challenges: Reduce cost of sales readiness delivery • Increase sales training consumption & adoption rates • Align enterprise sales organisation to corporate sales methodologies, systems & processes • Prepare & motivate enterprise sales teams for global launch of major new products • Improve sales performance
Impact: 28% YoY cost reduction in sales readiness delivery • Achieved 95% adoption rates • New sales readiness delivery programme adopted globally as best practice
Sponsors: UK General Manager • Corporate Sales Readiness Group
Click for video


SUMMARY: One of the world’s largest high-tech companies wanted to find new ways to improve the performance of its enterprise sales organisation.  Having experienced many years of exponential growth, the company recognised the need to invest in the development of its sales people in order to ensure long-term future growth.

Declare was initially approached by the General Manager of the UK Enterprise & Partner Group.  We were asked to review current sales readiness delivery practices and make recommendations on how to improve the productivity, efficiency and solutions knowledge of a large, complex sales organisation – an organisation comprised of pre- sales, technical sales, solutions sales,  and partner sales people as well as account managers and sales leaders.

Working with sales and business unit leaders as well as the company’s corporate sales readiness team, we devised a whole new programme for sales readiness in terms of approach, content and delivery.  Once we’d successfully implemented the programme for the UK, we were asked to extend the programme across the entire EMEA region.  In less than 18 months, the programme was delivered in 8 different locations across 2 continents for more than 1,000 people.  As a result, the programme was implemented for the Small, Medium & Partner business in EMEA and adopted as best practice by the company’s Corporate Sales, Marketing & Services Readiness Group.

See the programme in action – take a look at the video – or read on for more detailed insight on how we helped our client overcome their sales readiness challenges.

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SITUATION: With revenue targets in the coming fiscal year of over $1bn for the UK business, sales enablement was a pressing and demanding requirement.  The company also needed to prepare its sales organisations around the world for major new product launches.  Uptake by the enterprise customer base would be critical to the overall success of the new products.  Sales readiness needed to extend beyond technical product knowledge, pricing and availability, it needed to enable the enterprise sales organisation to embrace and understand the benefits of the company’s global sales process, methodology and systems as well as the commercial and financial value to customers of the new products.

Our agreed brief was to define and implement a sales enablement and readiness programme to meet the diverse needs of the Enterprise Sales and Partner Group in order to better align the organisation and meet both revenue and people goals.  In so doing it was agreed that the overall cost of sales readiness delivery needed to be reduced by 15% year on year.

APPROACH: Working with the UK General Manager, Sales Excellence, Industry and Solutions Directors as well as the Corporate Readiness Group in the US and EMEA, we spent time understanding the real needs of sales readiness consumers.  Whilst the company already had a comprehensive set of sales readiness offerings, why was there a shortfall in uptake?  Did these offerings really align to the needs of the sales organisation as individuals and as a group as a whole?  How could the company avoid wasting money on organising sales training workshops that were being poorly attended due to last minute cancellations?  How could we make the valuable time spent out of the field conducting sales readiness activities more appealing, relevant and valuable?

Because we spent time understanding the ‘customer’ - in this case, the enterprise sales organisation – our findings helped our client to understand more clearly the specific areas in which sales readiness needed to be improved.  Improvements that would make the vital content delivered via online or instructor-led training, workshops, knowledgeshare, reference and reinforcement points more engaging, appealing, relevant, cost-effective and, most importantly, actively adopted and applied by the entire enterprise sales organisation.

SOLUTION: With support from the Corporate Readiness Group coupled with input from our client’s approved training partners around the world, we devised and developed a whole new sales readiness programme - the Managed Approach to Sales Training, Education and Readiness (MASTERS).  Excited by the new programme and its supporting management tools, we were retained to orchestrate and manage a full rollout not just in the UK, but across the company’s enterprise sales organisations in the Central & Eastern Europe and Middle East & Africa regions – a total of some x countries.

Refreshed with new and engaging content delivered in both online and instructor-led formats, we supported the launch and ongoing delivery of the new programme with a continuous integrated, internal marketing campaign.  A marketing campaign designed to promote the programme’s availability, value and relevance as well as to create a sense of excitement amongst the sales organisations to want to participate in the new programme.

To fully deliver on the promise of the new programme, achieve the required cost efficiencies and extract additional value from peer networking, MASTERS included an annual, week-long, residential element.  By analysing the current cost model we identified significant costs savings could be realised by running multiple workshops simultaneously, thereby guaranteeing far higher attendance whilst reducing overall delivery costs per head.  The residential element also afforded attendees valuable networking time with their peers – a key finding resulting from our review of sales needs.

With the success of the programme endorsed further by the over-achievement of Field Readiness corporate scorecards and ratings, the approach was recognised and adopted as global best practice and implemented across other business segments.

RESULTS: The approach helped our client’s Enterprise and Partner Group to:

  • Overachieve it fiscal goals through increased team alignment and improved solutions knowledge
  • Achieve a cost saving of 28% year on year for sales readiness
  • Increase corporate solution sales process adoption rates to near 95% leading to more accurate forecasting, planning and measurement
  • Increase sales readiness consumption, completion & adoption rates
  • Enable its sales organisation to deliver detailed, ROI-based value propositions for their customers to increase the uptake of major new software releases and upgrades