A Case Study For CEOs, Heads Of Sales, CMOs, Investors, Asset Managers
Leaving Stale Sales Strategies Behind to Elevate and Accelerate Customer Engagement.
The situation: sales teams in a time warp.
The landscape has changed so drastically within sales. Technology has changed drastically. Purchasing channels have commoditized the sale. Yet teams attached to a sales process from yesteryear still engage the customer like they did in the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s.
Customers have become increasingly sophisticated and are looking for their sales teams to work with them very differently. They expect them to come to the table with insights on how the product will perform to make THEIR business more effective.
World-class brands, caught in how they learned it years ago.
Kate Burda & Co. has worked with a number of large brands and franchise groups whose revenue teams were in a time warp.
Such was the case at Hyatt, CSM, IHG, and a smaller independent branded company. The good part was their sales processes were sticky. Everyone knew the process from those that managed sales, sales teams, and those that came into contact with the sales process. The problem was, they were based off sales processes that worked very well when there wasn’t as much competition, and there wasn’t an Internet competing with their sales process. The results they were achieving were fine, in a good market, but there was downside.
Pricing efficacy.
When assets were sold, the price or rate was based on a small increase from years prior. Capital investments didn’t see the return, because although the product had changed, the selling strategy hadn’t.
Strategy / Approach:
These organizations had to accomplish three things to make the approach successful.
Understanding why the need.
What we quickly understood, in all cases, was that the teams had little time to evaluate what was working with the process and what wasn’t. Additionally there was a low-level customer buy that made it difficult for the sales teams to add value. Adding to another level of complexity, because the sales process wasn’t effective for them they had team members approaching every sales person, every client, every segment differently, making it impossible to coach and optimize the pipeline of business.
It isn’t training. It’s ensuring the sales team shows up in the way you need them to and the customer wants them to.
We put in a foundation of knowledge on how to engage customers effectively with a consultative sales call process. Not only for the sales team, but throughout the organization. The ethos of ‘everybody sells’ is a good way to explain an aspirational culture, but it isn’t effective if teams don’t have the foundation of how to sell into today’s world.
Focus and Framework: building in accountability to instill and cement the new learning.
Having the training to learn the process is only half the game. How to keep teams Focused and having the Framework in place to ensure repeatable results was critical to the outcomes we achieved in these cases. All too often sales teams are shown a new technique, only for it to be left by the wayside. Working with revenue management and operations on how the new process looks is critical so they are aware and more importantly aligned. Sales leaders also needed to be trained and coached on how to manage the process to get to the right result.
The Outcome:
ADR rate increase of 9% above market.
Through our work they had:
- Elevated approach and conversations with higher-level decision makers.
- Created value to customers that resulted in longer more profitable relationships.
- Unified framework of customer engagement that was known throughout organization to clarify and help drive revenue.
- Pipeline reflective of true value.