Tripling New Business- A Case Study
Sales Effectiveness & Improvement Analysis that Tripled New Business Loans
By Tony Cole, CEO of Anthony Cole Training Group
The following is a deep dive into the process and results experienced by a client company in recent history. It involves a large financial services company, the CEO of which decided to invest the time, money and resources necessary to uncover a myriad of internal issues that were limiting sales and growth.
Answers to questions 1-6 of The Nineteen Critical Questions are detailed below. Answers to questions 7-19 will be developed in follow up Case Study whitepaper.
The Nineteen Critical Questions
- How Does Sales Leadership Impact Our Sales Force?
- What Are Our Current Sales Competencies?
- How Motivated Are Our Salespeople and How Are They Motivated?
- Can We Generate More New Business?
- Can We Be Better at Reaching Actual Decision Makers?
- Can We Shorten Our Sales Cycle?
- Can We Sell More Consultatively?
- Can We More Effectively Sell Value?
- Is Our Value Proposition Consistent?
- Can We Close More Sales?
- Do Our Systems and Processes Support a High-Performance Sales Team?
- Can We Be More Consistent with Our Sales Process?
- How Well Are Our Sales Leadership Strategies Aligned?
- Do We Need to Change Our Selection Criteria?
- Can We Improve Ramp-Up?
- Are Our Sales Funnel Quantities and Forecasts Accurate?
- Can We Improve Our Sales Culture?
- Who Can Become More Effective in Their Roles?
- What Are the Short-term Priorities for Accelerated Growth?
Case Study Part 1: Sales Effectiveness & Improvement Analysis that Tripled New Business Loans
The following paper includes some of the initial findings and current outcomes (three years later) for a $1.3B financial institution which hired Anthony Cole Training Group in 2015. The company had multiple distant geographic locations with branches in local markets. A nondominant player in either market, it hoped to capitalize on strong brand recognition in its home town.
Growth was consistent but as with many organizations, growth came from a few particularly successful producers. After several unsuccessful attempts to incentivize all sales personnel to be more productive by right-sizing, changing compensation, realigning territories and reassigning managers, the CEO committed to investigating the “Why” so that they could understand “What” was making the few superstars successful so that they could duplicate these people in new hires going forward.
The Sales Effectiveness & Impact Analysis (SEIA)
The CEO, Sales Managers and Sales People each completed relevant survey questionnaires of the Sales Effectiveness & Impact Analysis which resulted in a one hundred and twenty-three-page document that provided insight to all sales managers, sales people, systems and processes and management factors that contributed to company outcomes.
The SEIA did not look to analyze market opportunities, competition or how the company was positioned in a given economy. The SEIA provided findings about the company that, as addressed, had the greatest potential to close the sales opportunity gap.
What follows includes a few highlights of the Sales Effectiveness & Impact Analysis (SEIA).
How Effective are Sales Leaders on Sales People?
Sales Managers:
There are 4 primary functions of Sales Managers. They are Coaching, Motivating, Recruiting and Accountability. The circles represent the percentage of appropriate skills each manager has in each function. The triangles represent the effectiveness of each manager in each area.
Overall the team is weak in the defined skills area for all four functions. But their effectiveness is quite good. Contributing factors for this:
- They have strong relationships.
- The people they hired are motivated and are take responsibility (they don’t make excuses).
- A positive finding in Recruiting is a result of the actual number of people identified as hitting goal.
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