Learning Launch – A Reflection

A new process to improve B2B sales

Challenge:  As a consultant in a firm that specializes in Transformation Projects, we found that while our  solution/frameworks brought about good results to increase sales in the B2C (Consumer) sales  environment, we did not have a solution that would work effectively in the B2B space. A brain  storming session with some of our Subject Matter Experts while discussing a New client’s problem  revealed that a lot of sales bandwidth is wasted in non-sales activities and plugging this wastage would  help to garner more sales. Hence our solution was in the direction of ensuring that the bandwidth of  the sales managers is used in selling to customers and not in transactional activities like order  processing etc. While the elements of the solution were clear, we had no first -hand experience in  implementing it. We wanted to try the solution once on a smaller scale before actually deploying it.  Hence, we got the consent of the client to implement it at one of their zonal offices before we do a  nation-wide roll out.  The challenge was to make the best use of this opportunity while ensuring that  at least some improvement is achieved (so that the client gives a go ahead). As a firm we wanted to  identify the shortcomings and areas of improvement so that the solution would be robust and can  become a potential offering to our clients in the future.    Selection:  While the solution requires a roll out across all the zonal sales office of the client, we wanted to ensure  that our solution can deliver results on a small scale and surface any wrong assumptions in the solution  before we go on a full blast across all the zonal offices. We needed a quick and small pilot  implementation to be done before we can go forward. Hence Learning Launch was the right approach  to be followed.    Application:  We decided that we would do a pilot launch of the solution in the West Zone Head office and would  roll out to other zonal offices after assessing the learning launch. We had an initial buy in session with  all the team members about the elements of the solution and why it would benefit the company. We  also addressed their concerns and ensured that were completely on board in transitioning to the new  process. As mentioned earlier, the sales managers had to be decoupled from the non-sales activities.  Hence, we had to reorganize the sales team by segregating the resources who would be doing the  sales calls and those who would be performing other transactions. We divided the team into four work  centers namely

•  Core Sales and Business Development

•  Customer Correspondence and scheduling

•  Technical Solutioning Support

•  Order Processing

We came up with dashboards to monitor the flow of work, workloads in front of each team and set  up review mechanisms for issue resolution. We had decided to do this for a couple of weeks before  we would decide on further course of action     Insights:   One of the prime criteria for being a part of the Sales/Business Development Team, apart from Strong  knowledge of the product was “Good Communication skills and command in English “. But once the  Sales managers started to reach out to the customers over phone calls, we realized that many  customers were not conversant in English and hence required communication in the local language.  The target market being India, there were more than 30 different languages spoken and hence

understanding the local language (at least of that region) was a must. Similarly, the customer  correspondence specialists who were taking care of mail exchanges spent a lot of time drafting mails  as they were extra cautious about their verbalization. This wasted a lot of their time and resulted in  lot of pending mails for the team. A simple study revealed that most of these conversations were  common and they could be standardized by making mail templates.  We also realized that this process  can also be used to obtain data that would help us analyze lost sales opportunities. This provided some  interesting insights that could be shared with the Client’s Product Management team so that they can  use this feedback to improve their current /upcoming New Products.    Approach  The enquiry conversion rate started showing a marked improvement after the first 2 weeks of the  Learning Launch. The learning launch helped us to understand the areas where we could improve the  effectiveness and also reduce the lead time of deploying the New process. We incorporated our  learnings from the Pilot as a part of the Standard Operating Procedure for the upcoming roll outs.  We  have also decided to involve the current Zonal Office head in the Upcoming Buy in sessions so that  she can share her first-hand experience of the process and the benefits that they realized. Thus,  Learning launch proved to be an effective tool, albeit in a quick and dirty manner before we could do  a formal and robust roll out across all the zonal offices in the country.

