By John Fowler
Moving an I.T. company from Product To Services Sales
In the communications industry there are two types of people - Bell Heads and Net Heads i.e. those who understand voice and those who understand data. This old, established voice products manufacturer needed to move into the data world, and the unified communications market with the onset of technologies like VoIP (Voice over IP).
Through mergers and acquisitions they acquired lots of data companies and their associated products and services, but the expected revenues did not appear. Quick analysis of the situation showed that the sales people were uncomfortable introducing the new data products to their customers. Many had board level relationships with their customers, but felt they did not have the data background to allow them to discuss data with them. A needs analysis was completed and presented the findings to the European board to gain their buy-in to move forward with the project.
This became known as the right-angled turn, impacting the culture of this company and the way that they did business. We designed a program consisting of 3 workshops each running for 3 days, which culminated in becoming certified to sell data, which was linked to the sales force's compensation plan.
To ensure the program didn't become dry and technical, the technology was introduced on a pre-program CD, with a web-based test prior to joining the actual program. The face to personal face learning was focused on specific markets, the customers' business drivers and applications to deliver business results. All of this was underpinned with role plays, where each team worked with customers to deliver a business solution. The role play ran throughout the 3 sessions, developing and deepening the sales people's understanding of what a customer wants from them.
As there were 600 sales people to train in Europe, we ran the pilots and then ran TTT sessions to train 6 delivery teams of two people. The take-up of the program meant that the whole sales force was trained in 18 months, and the program spun-off to other groups in Europe like Pre-sales, Operations and Marketing, in addition to being run across the Asia Pacific region.
About the Author: John Fowler is a sales and management trainer designing and delivering workshops across the world specifically for the IT industry. John can be contacted on his website at Sales Training Consultants.
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