‘From individual stars to star teams’
Challenge
A major premium brand wanted to sell conference facilities from its retail outlets and felt the sales team needed training and skills development to upsell these facilities.
After two good years, they weren’t hitting budget and losing repeat business. The management team were convinced training combined with the development of new skills would get the business back on track.
Approach
A one-day visit was organised and a confidential questionnaire was sent to all team members.
What we found
- An effective sales team of good individual salespeople, but varying degrees of success collectively due to communication issues.
- As the team got busier, lines between roles and responsibility blurred, so they weren’t 100% productive or efficient.
- No clear processes in place for leads to be passed to sales teams
- No process in place for gaining client feedback following an event.
Using feedback and observations we demonstrated to senior managers that the team didn’t need sales qualification training – our research showed they needed better communication skills and daily working schedules.
What we did
After two half-day workshops and monthly 1-2-1 coaching sessions, the team started to perform better. By introducing a few tweaks to their current processes and showing them how to improve their communication and listening skills we helped to improve team morale.
After introducing standardisation across all retail outlets and adopting the “Review Learn Improve“ approach for all events, the team are far more efficient.
Impact
Our non-judgemental business review combined with a confidential bespoke questionnaire enabled us to demonstrate the real issues, which led to:
- Increased confidence amongst all team members
- Improved closing rates by 15%
- The instigation of a daily process for team communication
- Defined roles and responsibilities for all team members
- The introduction of new tools and communication techniques.
Our recommendations and improvements helped to:
- Eliminate inefficiencies in business processes and daily work schedules
- Provide the team with a platform to review, learn and improve. They started to see previous customers return
- Save the company down time and the cost of generic sales training
- Transform the team into a more communicative, cohesive unit
- Increase their sales closing skills.
Outcome
Alisar’s professionalism, enthusiasm and motivation shone through in all areas and the support and commitment shown both throughout the programmes and afterwards is fantasticCommercial Manager, Mercedes-Benz World
After our involvement the company has become more efficient and customer focused, and was on course to exceed their annual target by £100K. As a result the General Manager recommended us to work with other divisions within this premium manufacturer’s outlet.
“Alisar provided a great bespoke training programme that was specific to our business needs and objectives. The programmes were a massive benefit as they re-energized the team and the team were responsive to the way it was delivered.
As well as group training the individual coaching was positive and provoked different thought processes which bought positive results.
The main aim was to motivate and bring the team together after a difficult year financially to ensure focus and a new start – this criterion was met and helped us to finish the year with fantastic results financially.”