Building New Skills in a Consultative Sales Force

Problem

A leading distributor of commercial products was experiencing eroding profit margins in most of its major markets. Over time, increased competition and a tough economic environment had caused the company’s customers to become extremely price sensitive. The distributor’s management realized that relationship selling—the traditional approach employed by its sales force—was no longer working. Go To Market Partners was engaged to develop and alternative selling method that would revive the sagging profits.

Action

GTM Partners’ consultants began by evaluating the existing skills of the sales force. We shadowed salespeople during sales calls, spoke with customers, and interviewed sales managers to gain a full understanding of the customers’ buying processes and the skills required to sell to them successfully. From this analysis, we developed a list of skills that needed to be taught and/or refined to boost the sales force’s capabilities. These included the skills of questioning, pricing, and negotiating.

To teach these skills, we created a fully-customized training program that included both classroom-style instruction and small group role plays. Thus, salespeople were exposed to theory and then immediately practiced it to ingrain the learning. The role plays were based on actual customer scenarios that the salespeople encountered daily and were tailored to specific regions, product groups, and customer segments.

After the training sessions, our consultants spent time in the field with the sales force to reinforce the training and prevent the acquired skills from evaporating. Over the course of 4 months, more than 120 salespeople and sales managers received one-on-one training in customer questioning skills, product pricing techniques, sales negotiation tactics.

Result

The effect of the training was dramatic. No longer relinquished to relationship selling, the sales force used its new skills to identify unknown customer needs, price their products profitably, and to negotiate confidently with buyers. As a result, profit margins increased along with revenues and the morale of the salespeople. In the quarter following the rollout of this project, the client experienced its most profitable quarter in its history.