SALES TURNAROUND IN

FORTUNE 100 BUSINESS

– CASE STUDY

THE CHALLENGE

In 2009, the software division of a multinational IT manufacturer created a new global business unit by combining 3 internal organizations, in order to gain scale and save costs. But, within a year, this newly formed business was facing many challenges. Financial results were at only 80% of plan and the morale of the organization was beginning to weaken.

The most pressing problem was the lack of success in acquiring new customers and breaking into new areas of their market. The decision was made to focus on strengthening the sales organization. Although the sales teams were staffed by experienced professionals, who had spent many years working in their industry segment, something was wrong with their approach to the market and to selling.

THE SOLUTION

One of the three regional organizations within the new business unit wanted to ensure they had the right sales people aligned with their customers and their market sector in the right way. OND was brought in to help solve this business problem. They implemented Method Teaming, which is a science and methodology that enables companies to create predictable, high performance, mission-perfect teams. The first step OND took was to identify and profile the natural strengths and talents of the sales people. It immediately became crystal clear they had sales people in the wrong roles and they were missing specific sales talent in other areas.

The second step for OND was to teach the Business Unit leadership how to apply Method Teaming and accurately shape their teams for maximum productivity and competitive advantage.
A plan was created to address the gaps that were discovered and prioritized towards the positive impact that a change would bring to the business. Unfortunately, due to the poor business performance, they were not allowed to make any new hires. Instead, the initial steps had to be made by placing their existing sales representatives into roles that aligned with their natural strengths and talents and prevent them from playing out of position.

THE OUTCOME

After the first quarter, the plan started to show positive results. By the end of the second quarter, the sales organization improved their sales pipeline for early stage deals by over 100%. Based on this business improvement, a limited amount of hiring was approved and the talent gaps in the organization began to be filled. Within an 18 month period, 47% of the sales people had changed their roles or been moved and replaced by people with different natural strengths.

Method Teaming had proven to be surgically precise in identifying talent gaps in the company and determining which sales representatives had the natural strengths and talents for specific sales roles. The leadership team knew, without doubt, who in their team was best suited to be new business hunters, managers of large accounts and technical sales specialists. Most importantly, the sales management understood that they could not train a sales person to have these required talents; they knew they had to be born with them!

In addition to over-achieving on their business goals, Method Teaming gave them some other key benefits and business outcomes that included:

• Retention of the best talent
• Effective engagement of young talent
• Confidence, trust and motivation across teams
• Elimination of bad hires
• Rapid new team formation and deployment