ORGANIZATIONAL CONSULTING
LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT
- Global Leadership Development Program
- Executive Development
- Blended Leadership Development
- Sales Leadership
- Leading Remote Teams
EXECUTIVE COACHING
AWARDS
Sales Leadership at Two Hi-Tech Companies
The Need
As leading-edge technologies become commodities and profitability falls, many companies shift from a product-led sales strategy to a service or solution-selling approach. Our clients, both leaders in their market niche, wanted to make that shift. The decline in the demand for hi-tech products, along with the spiraling economy, accelerated the need for them to squeeze more value from their products and services. The challenge: how do you make sales people, driven by 90-day sales revenue goals, think and operate more strategically – and break out of the traditional product sales approach?
The Piñon Group Approach
We used a System Mapping® framework, but in two different ways. Working with the Global Sales Organization at this Silicon Valley based company we undertook a global needs analysis by interviewing executives, sales and account managers, and sales people across the US, Europe and Asia-Pac. This helped us explore and understand the dynamics of their current marketplace, as well as the external challenges facing the GSO sales people. We then used the System Mapping® framework to identify patterns, relationships and dependencies. We were able to pinpoint the specific organizational, structural and training measures to support a successful solution selling program.
Working with our other client, we used the System Mapping® framework to help sales people leverage greater understanding of their clients’ businesses. To train the sales force in the use of the framework (a highly potent tool for sales ) we delivered events in the US, Europe, Middle East, Africa, India, Australia, Japan, Mexico, Brazil and Argentina where actual clients participated to provide feedback to sales people on the effectiveness of the process.
What the Clients Said . . .
“At last we found consultants who understood the solution selling process, and helped us to understand that sales training was only one of the levers for change. Their system thinking framework really helped bring into sharp focus the other areas of our business we needed to align with the solution selling approach.”
Director,
Corporate University
“I would like to emphasize that it was the processes and frameworks that are now being introduced through the Leading Net Services program that helped me secure this agreement. This deal is evidence to show that the processes work, and I would hope it encourages others to experiment as the outcomes that are achievable can be measured in millions of $.”
Account Director,
Telecoms
(after securing a $5m contract from a major European client)
