Standardized Sales

The Problem

An electronics firm was growing rapidly, both internally and through acquisitions. It was consolidating each newly acquired sales force into one of its three divisions, but all these salespeople were still selling differently, using different processes. “It was a Tower of Babel; each had their own way of selling,” remembers Steve Callender, manager of demand creation at Wilson Learning. “They used the same term to mean different things and different terms to mean the same thing. There were different customer interfaces, and they would speak to a manufacturer on the east coast differently from on the west coast.” The company wanted a standard process for everyone, and it wanted the best process for its business.

Finding the Solution

In the summer of 2005, Wilson Learning’s partner, Advance Business Learning (ABL), was called in to customize for the company the consultative sales model originally developed by Wilson. This model has four major steps: relating to customers, discovering needs and priorities, advocating a solution, and supporting the solution.

“The idea is to see the customer as a person with a problem that you may or may not be able to solve,” Callender summarizes. “If you can solve it, then selling is natural, positive, and honest. This contrasts with the old model in which you regard a customer as a person with your commission in his pocket, and your job is to get it out of his pocket.”

Making it Work

ABL first installed consultative selling by teaching Wilson’s Inbound Sales Excellence program to reps who worked in inbound contact centers. By the end of 2005, the electronics firm was highly satisfied with these initial results, so ABL rolled out consultative sales for about 200 sales managers and 660 salespeople.

A study in December 2006 showed a highly favorable return on investment to date, so the program was further expanded to  include new sales hires – the company doubled its sales force during implementation – and employees who supported sales as product, supply-chain, or material managers. For these reps, managers, and supporting professionals, ABL used Wilson’s other major program, Counselor Salesperson (CSP). “Any part of the team that discovers prospect needs, generates competitive solutions, or anticipates future needs speaks the same language and uses the same tools,” Callender explains.

Initial training in consultative selling was brief and efficient, just a couple of days for each person. Video miniclinics showed common and realistic scenarios for critical sales cases in team meetings led by managers. The team used Wilson’s analytic and planning tools to better understand the prospect’s needs.

More work came afterward. “The key is embedding the approach in their system,” Callender says. For example, a discovery agreement is written up after each call or contact that confirms the subjects discussed, identifies the customer’s issues, and lays out next steps. The client implemented this form electronically so that everyone dealing with a manufacturer, sales rep or not, could see the same information. Sales managers were coached to hold reps responsible for this critical agreement.

There were about a dozen other pro-cesses and forms required by Wilson’s consultative sales method. Reps and managers were surveyed to check on the use of these elements, and managers were coached to promote the comprehensive use of any that were being ignored. The company developed its own customer relationship management (CRM) system and embedded Wilson’s processes and vocabulary in this CRM. “It is in their DNA now,” Callender says. “It is how everybody talks and how everybody sells.” 

Measuring Results

Assessing the impact of one change in sales is tricky. Companies usually make several changes simultaneously, markets shift, and the economy changes. And this company continued expanding its sales force during consultative sales training.

Effects of training could be measured scientifically by teaching some reps but not others, as a control group. But few companies delay a training program they see as beneficial. Some companies roll out training in steps in different regions, and effects could be estimated by this ‘natural experiment.’

Neither method was available in this case. So Callender, who is also a senior consultant in impact evaluation for Wilson, chose a different approach which consisted of a thorough survey and its interpretation by very conservative methods.

Wilson received completed survey forms from 944 sales reps, 74 percent of the total reps; 415 forms from professionals who supported customers, 80 percent of this total; and 223 from managers, more than three-quarters of sales management.

More than 91 percent of sales reps found that the consultative approach was effective in connecting with customers, and 79 percent found the approach effective in connecting with other members of their sales teams. But how much money had the new approach brought in?

Sales reps were asked how much of a single high-dollar sale of $50,000 or $100,000 that they were involved in was attributable to the consultative selling approach, after all other factors had been recognized. The reps’ estimates ranged from 21 to 30 percent for the $50,000 sales and from 61 to 70 percent for the $100,000 sales.

Wilson took the minimum ends of these ranges and then reduced them further by two-thirds to make extremely conservative estimates, 7 and 20 percent, of the effects of the consultative methods. Applying these reduced percentages to all sales made by the reps, the consultative sales approach accounted for an estimated gross revenue of more than $30 million.

Taking only the gross profit on the sales increase and deducting the cost of training for the new method, Wilson estimated the approach yielded more than a million dollars in net profit, for a return on investment of 35 percent.