Background and Challenge
Our client engaged L.E.K. Consulting to support the transformation of its sales force in order to realize near-term profitable growth and achieve long-term structural improvement in the effectiveness of its sales force. The success of this turnaround was critical given the substantial debt load the company was supporting. Our client was struggling to generate revenue growth and retain customers resulting in declining market share in a growing market. Specific issues included:
- Lack of sales culture and limited focus on building customer relationships
- Mixed ability to articulate its value proposition to customers and a reactive approach to prospecting
- Difficulty in cross-selling, up-selling, and solution-selling
- Lack of accountability in driving growth among global and regional customers
Approach and Recommendations
We identified new opportunities to increase selling capacity without adding resources by redefining roles and responsibilities, increasing the focus on selling rather than operational support. We identified investment reallocation opportunities to focus the sales force on higher growth customers and regions. We created new, efficient sales processes to marshal the right company resources to win critical opportunities and sharpened the selling focus on differentiated, higher value added solutions. Finally, we designed a new sales organization structure to better enable our client to service its global clients as true strategic partners, while maintaining the flexibility necessary to engage with regional clients.
We enabled this transformation by setting up a sales transformation office (STO) that defined work streams, mobilized teams and determined sales priorities. We also guided the leadership team as it drove the needed changes through the development of change management and communication plans.
Results
Within three months of implementing our recommendations, our client experienced significant and measurable sales improvements. The client met quarterly financial goals following several missed quarters, and substantially grew the sales and win rates. Finally, our client won a major customer renewal opportunity by leveraging the new processes.
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