The Client

The client is a multi-national corporation specialised in payment card services

The Objectives

A global blue chip company with an established sales force, the company was facing an increasingly competitive marketplace with a disparate sales infrastructure across the EMEA region.

An irregular performance distribution across a large sales team (c500) with a decentralized approach to the sales infrastructure was resulting in missed opportunities, forecasting inaccuracy and lack of employee engagement.

The main leaders of the business were convinced of the need to develop a cohesive sales strategy across the whole region and which included not only the sales team structure but also all sales operations.

The solution

A vision was built of the Point of Arrival for the sales function and a roadmap to achieve this was drafted. An improvement in the ROI of the sales function was achieved via a  multi-tiered approach;

Phase 1

• Built and operationalized a principle-based targeting methodology ensuring fair and equitable targets appropriate to the sales conditions and the individuals market, segment and tenure ultimately resulting in the normalised distribution of performance. Significant stakeholder management coupled with internal focus  group input enabled the right balance of simplicity and fit for purpose

• Aligned reward and recognition principles with business goals to introduce motivational and profitable sales incentive plans. The natural extension of achieving a fair and equitable targeting methodology was a motivational yet achievable variable incentive scheme.

Phase 2

• Designed and delivered a new Sales Training Academy, leading to a greater focus on personal development. A commitment to a benchmarked, consistent and aspirational training programme was required to match the continuing improvement expected in an individual’s performance

• Promoted best practice structures across the entire EMEA region resulting in improved  team performance, reducing the cost of new business in 25% of teams by more than  20%

Phase 3

• Promoted culture of performance management through the introduction of a framework to drive greater focus on sales performance by spotlight on continual improvement

• Addressed market differences and cultural nuances without straying from the principled-based approach. Allowing for cultural and market differences allowed the potential to be maximized without compromising the delivery of an agreed company structure that fit the product set, commercial standing, customer demographic and economic outlook.

Phase 4

• Centralised the sales operations for the region resulting in audit and control improvements. Objective gatekeeping for the large variable pay budget and for escalation purposes enabled an environment of absolute transparency and fair dealing, a key pillar of the company’s code of conduct and in keeping with the integrity of the overall business.

The outcome

It was clear throughout all stages of the program of work that there would be no one  solution which would drive the measured improvements sought, indeed the success  of the program was achieved by a combination of improvements in each of the  interdependent factors that make up the sales infrastructure.

Alongside the improvements in hard numbers a significant cultural shift was also  achieved whereby the sales function was able to align with the company values of  having a fair and equitable performance and remuneration structure, a focus on  continual performance improvement and a considerable shift in positive  communication lines. These improvements not only resulted in increased return on  investment but in increased employee engagement and retention.