We were recently asked to support a world-leading organisation to help them build a best-in-class Sales Leadership Team capable of driving significantly improved results throughout their organisation.
The Client
One of the world’s largest express delivery companies with over 50,000 employees operating in 60 countries across Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia-Pacific and the Americas.
The Challenge
After a long period of sustained uncertainty and mixed business results, our client was embarking on a salesforce effectiveness programme as part of a major turnaround initiative. However, they also recognised that change needs to start at the top and therefore asked us to work with their Sales Leadership Team and uncover the following:
- What leadership capabilities do they need as a leadership team to support and coach their teams towards higher levels of performance?
- Do they have the right leaders and leadership team in place to drive the required sales growth through the organisation?
- How well placed is the leadership team to lead in an increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous world?
- What development do leaders and the leadership team need in order to become high-performing?
Our Solution
After spending a lot of time listening to various leaders across the business discuss current issues and future challenges in their organisation and the broader industry, we agreed to a two-stage approach:
Sales Leadership Evaluation: The evaluation of sales leaders’ strengths, development areas, potential and motivation in areas identified as critical to success in the short, medium and long term.
Sales Leadership Development: A range of individual and group development activities, both formal and informal, designed to ensure sustained development for leaders in an increasingly ambiguous environment.
The Result
In the 12 months following the programme, our client reported an increase in top line sales results and attibutes a significant propotion of this to our intervention. Aside from tangible sales results, they also reported:
- Each leader has a much clearer view of how they best add value to the organisation and how to use their leadership strengths much more widely which has led to a much stronger focus on personal development across the sales organisation.
- Given their now stronger insight into what ‘best-in-class’ sales leadership looks like, they have been able to not only develop their own capabilites, but are much better equipped to support the development of their teams. The impact on capability building has gone much deeper than just that of the sales leadership team.
- Collectively, they now operate much more effectively and efficiently as a leadership team, play to each others strengths and support each other in developing their weaknesses.