Client Successes - Increase Sales and Profits

Industry: Long Distance

Function: Regional Sales Office

Problems: Sales growth fell short of target

Outcome: Region became the fastest growing region in the company; sharing of expertise among sales staff led to innovative sales solutions and new products, sales staff retention and a shorter learning curve for new hires

Situation: Four years after the deregulation of the long distance industry, a regional manager for a new phone company was responsible for opening and growing a sales office in a sparsely populated agricultural region that primarily contained small towns and locally owned businesses. The majority of the market was controlled by AT&T, which indicated that most customers were unwilling to give up the security of the products they already had for the promise of lower prices – they did not understand deregulation. The regional manager, a former telecommunications director of the largest bank in the region, was uniquely qualified to address this opportunity. Using a consulting approach that focused on customer education, the regional manager was able to sign up the most recognized businesses in the region. With references secured, the regional manager hired a sales person for each territory and trained them to sell the company’s products.

Even though the region’s sales were growing steadily, the manager could see that opportunities for sales were consistently being missed. The manager realized that the territory sales people were not sharing their expertise with each other, taking advantage of obvious cross selling opportunities, or making the effort to develop innovative sales solutions. Over time, each territory sales person fell into a repetitious pattern of selling a particular product mix. With the weekly sales meeting as the only opportunity for the sales staff to exchange ideas, each territory salesperson was oblivious to what was being sold in the other territories. In addition, training new salespeople was a lengthy and frustrating experience for both the sales people and the regional manager.

Challenge: The regional manager wanted to be the fastest growing region in the company and the top selling region in the company. To achieve this goal, the performance of each territory sales person would need to improve, additional sales people would need to be hired and training procedures would need to be streamlined.

Meeting the Challenge: Thought Process Optimization and the Intellectual Capital Repository (ICR) were used to:

Capture thought process models for each salesperson. Enable salespeople to improve their thought process models and continuously learn from their colleagues. Train new employees. Establish a collaborative innovation process among salespeople that was years ahead of its time by providing the ability to mix and match thought processes and continuously improve and expand the quality of their thought processes.

Results: This region grew faster than any other region and within 18 months it was the number one region in the company...the manager amassed a large collection of “manager of the year” plaques and out-earned all the other managers…and this office became the model for all the sales offices in the company.

Each salesperson gained years of expertise in a few days and immediately improved sales. As sales improved, commissions grew and the salespeople also amassed a number of awards.

As new salespeople were hired, instead of time consuming training sessions, the regional manger had them copy and use the thought process model of the top salesperson in the region. New hires were productive in a few days and were soon performing at superior levels.

Weekly sales meetings were replaced with the ICR so that salespeople could use it to share expertise across territories and to make mental connections that enabled them to create innovative sales solutions.

A Win/Win situation was created for customers, company, regional manager and salespeople. Customers saved money…the company increased bottom-line profits…the regional manager increased her salary and bonus…and the salespeople increased their commissions.

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