CUSTOMER SUCCESS STORY

Retail sales growth by finding the need behind the need

Retail employees at this telecommunications provider needed to increase the conversion of foot traffic to sales. But their conversations were too transactional, with no thought of up-or cross-selling. We set out to help their retail teams get to their customers' need behind the need.

The challenge

Being more than just a transactional seller

This telecommunications organization’s ethos is exceptional customer experiences underpinned by genuine value – but their retail experience wasn't living this promise. Typically, customers would come into the store and tell a salesperson what they wanted; and the salesperson would deliver it. Simply put, the experience would feel very transactional. One of the organization's VPs often visited stores on a mystery shop. Once, when he visited a store considering a new pair of headphones, a salesperson asked him to name his favorite song. Within seconds, he was rocking out to his favorite song while sampling the headphones he was considering purchasing. In that moment, he had stopped thinking about just needing a new set of headphones and started thinking about how much a top-end product brought him a sound quality and experience that completely lift his mood. As a customer, he was hooked. So the company knew that when a salesperson engaged, got to the real need behind their need, the customer spent more and had a better impression of the brand. But many of the retail staff were not career salespeople. They needed training to offer a consistent experience, but one still flexible enough to address the breadth of salesperson skillsets, store dynamics, and customer buying preferences. They started looking for a partner who understood that training was not just about driving specific actions but about developing salespersons' underlying capabilities and competencies so that finding the need behind the need became instinctive.

Partnering with Korn Ferry

Embedding a new approach into the sales culture and processes

The solution

“Retail sales staff joined our Professional Selling Skills® course to give them the methodology and skills to uncover the need behind the need.”

There was a big pitch on the table in New York, and they were determined to win it. After a successful 2-hour opportunity coaching session, having a sales methodology came into focus for them. They wanted to test it to see if it could streamline and focus their pitching process. The team started working on employing our sales methodology to this pitch. They spent 90 days working on the presentation, compiling data, and planning their approach. It paid off. They won the business, and a new focus on the value of sales process and strategy was born. Having seen the triumph of the New York pitch, the organization was keen to press on and pilot our sales methodology in two markets. The success of those pilots was enough for the initiative to be rolled out throughout the US sales force.

Motivated staff, contributing to 20% year-on-year sales growth

The results

We worked with the organization to develop an executive dashboard. This focused on specific metrics: sales conversion rate, cross-sell rate, and sales of non-core offerings (i.e., accessories, fixed telephone lines, etc.). In addition, the dashboard provided store, area, state, and corporate views of benchmarked past performance, before training, and performance post-training metrics.

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Australian telecommunications provider

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20% year-on-year revenue growth

10% increase in sales conversion rate

The return on investment

Background

Deployment of our sales methodology as part of an end-to-end sales transformation delivered a increase in top-line revenues and a win rate increase to over

The plan was to get buy-in from leadership and key stakeholders for a training program, and then roll it out to store managers before sales consultants. In addition, ongoing training and reinforcement would be integrated with the organization’s employee platform and digitized to allow continuous sales consultant learning on-the-go and on-demand. All this culminated in rolling out our Professional Selling Skills® course to the retail sales staff to give them the methodology and skills to uncover the need behind the need.

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This company has more than ten million customers, with retail stores across the nation selling devices, plans, and accessories.

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10% increase in sales conversion rate

20% year-on-year revenue growth

20%

The return on investment

Partnering with Korn Ferry

“Many of the retail staff were not career salespeople. Their underlying capabilities and competencies needed developing.”

year-on-year revenue growth

"The firm's customer support underwent a remarkable transformation."

+12.9 Net Promoter Score (NPS)

The central element of the course covered five stages, Open, Discover, Satisfy, Close, and Respond to Indifference. This helped the salesperson develop a rapport with the customer, get to the core of what they were trying to accomplish, and then offer them a personalized solution to meet that need. With each of these five steps, we defined the underlying sales consultant actions, customer commitments, sales consultant competencies to be successful, and technologies/tools to support the sales consultant. The organization rolled out the program in six waves of 60 stores each, starting with multi-day training for managers. They then took this back to their stores and coached their teams, starting small and slowly adding behaviors and complexity allowing sales consultants to develop and grow. The content from the initial rollout to store managers was transformed from full-day sessions to 30-minute bite-sized learning "chats" that a manager could quickly and discreetly provide to a sales consultant or small group during lulls in foot traffic. The program also included a certification program for individuals and stores to build competence levels and add accountability.

Through the dashboard, leaders were thrilled to see service interactions and customer satisfaction improve as a customer-centric organization, with noticeable uptake of +12.9 Net Promoter Score (NPS). The program also contributed to 20% year-on-year revenue growth and exceeded their objectives of increasing conversion by 10% and cross-sell/attachment up to 20% in some high-performing stores. They demonstrated a fundamental change in their sales consultants; the program motivated, rewarded, and energized the team, with 93% motivated and excited to be part of the program due to its benefits. Staff now had the training and tools to succeed. Through genuinely connecting with the customer and being interested in their circumstances, the team increased service attachment dramatically and lifted conversion overall. The organization set out to give their customers a better experience and empower their staff to think customer first rather than just sell them a product. They now have a more loyal customer base, a better-motivated team, and a program for sustainable sales growth. All from a simple desire to meet the need behind the need.

“The organization now has a more loyal customer base, a better-motivated team, and a program for sustainable sales growth.”

increase in conversion and cross-sell/attachment

10-20%

Net Promoter Score (NPS)

+12.9

+12.9 Net Promoter Score (NPS)

“Retail sales staff joined our Professional Selling Skills® course to give them the methodology and skills to uncover the need behind the need.”