Case study: Building a sales academy in a complex product environment
April 18, 2019 by Helen Wilcox in Latest NewsThe key success factor in building a successful Sales Academy – Partnership
How can we create a high impact sales academy where the sales team have complex product options? Kojo Academy is currently involved in creating a ground breaking sales academy where the client has a high value complex product.
In this situation sales training needs to be spot on with detail to enhance reputation in sales skills in front of the customer. This will deliver immediate value within the sales team. How are we doing this?
The Kojo Team worked alongside our client to develop a totally bespoke, blended and cutting-edge sales academy for the sales teams deployed across the UK; from Ireland to London. Establishing the business objectives for this client was essential from the start and it was achieved with a blend of online resources together, with face to face practise-based workshops.
Sales Academy: Objectives
All content within the academy had to work hard for its place so we created high quality online material. The online material could be accessed anywhere in the field for quick reference; before, during or after engaging with customers.
The content needed to successfully harness the expert insight held by Product Specialists and disseminated to sales teams.
Sales managers are a key part of the delivery as coaches. This entails coaching learners throughout their journey, providing feedback and also advice for assignments and presentations.
A critical objective was to provide a framework to improve territory management in relation to multiple product targets. This requires overlaying multiple territory plans to form a well thought out actionable plan for each sales person.
Gathering together real product USP and Competitive advantages with customer needs is essential to secure ROI.
Integrating the academy with product’s internal update system allows for quarterly reviews to maintain content and keep the academy fresh.
The right blend to improve performance
Challenges
Sales teams are a notorious group to impress and need to be primed in the correct way to engage with the academy. Careful comms and marketing is necessary to achieve this.
Content creation relied heavily on cooperation from product management who have concerns about the transmission of technical detail to sales teams.
Striking the right blend between sales methodology and product insight within the training is crucial to ensure effectiveness.
In order for Kojo to achieve maximum impact we interviewed, filmed and edited interviews from successful sales people . Insights from the sales people interviewed were used to anchor the content and drive engagement.
Structuring the online prep work, the face-to-face training and follow-up assignments around the schedule of the learners was a logistical challenge for the academy.
Measuring outputs of the training had to account for the L&D systems and it had to work with existing LMS functionality. The internal product management process was adapted to ensure ‘ownership’.
The outcome
The sales academy is in full operational mode now. It provides a thorough, joined up sales development programme to the salesforce. Running over approximately 12 months our sales teams have been learning the full product range. Over the 12 months, all teams are measured on the sales of the product.
“This is some great work you guys are doing, the way it looks and your continuous engagement is a real credit to you all. I can’t wait to see this all in action with our sales teams.”
Area Business Manager
“Best course I have been on!”
“Very well structured.”
“Best training I have attended.”
Feedback from the sales team
