Each year the American Society for Training & Development recognizes individuals and teams who advance the knowledge of the workplace learning and performance profession and contribute to workforce capability and organizational competitiveness through their exemplary practices. Their work inspires and informs us all, and their accomplishments demonstrate how learning drives the performance of businesses and organizations worldwide.
The Excellence in Practice category recognizes organizations for results achieved through learning and performance solutions. Awards are presented for proven practices that have delivered measurable results, and Citations are presented for practices from which much can be learned.
Here are this year's citations in the area of sales enablement.
E*TRADE Financial
New York, New York
Advisory Challenges
The Advisory Challenges Training was created to address common and recurring challenges sales professionals face when having conversations with their clients regarding long term investing. The efforts were aimed at helping financial professionals approach sales conversations in a way that would provide true value to their clients, as well as create a repeatable process they can implement in their businesses.
The content and delivery methods were designed for live, virtual workshops to allow the sales professionals to share ideas with one another and encourage brainstorming and relationship building. The workshops were supplemented with “off-the-shelf” training material including discussion questions and role-play activities to be used by branch managers to ensure learning continued beyond the initial training engagement. The practice resulted in supporting a shift from a service-oriented culture to a sales-oriented culture, aiding in creating a collaborative cross-branch network, and increasing sales by more than 49 percent since the launch of the training program.
HDFC Standard Life Insurance Company Limited
Mumbai, India
Improving First Level Sales Manager (FLS) Productivity
The regulatory framework in India’s insurance industry became very active as the government implemented a number of guidelines to improve cost efficiency and protect customer interest. At HDFC, low productivity, high turnover, and increased regulation led the new CEO to commission a program in an effort to stay competitive.
FLS Learning Roadmap is a joint product of the Learning and Development staff and Program Management. It is a structured learning curriculum designed to enable front line sales employees in the individual agency business. The roadmap defined a new career path for employees, aligning key result areas with three defined career levels in the FLS employee life cycle. Course content and learning outcomes were centered on real-life problem solving, leading to higher employee engagement. Overall results were a strong indicator of an efficient use of learning and development resources. FLS’s productivity for the first three career levels has seen an increase since program implementation.
Hewlett Packard International, PPS HR Learning & Organization Development
Meyrin, Switzerland
Mercuri International
United Kingdom
Performance Methods, Inc.
Atlanta, Georgia
Fly High for Sales Managers
Hewlett Packard (HP) had a sales ecosystem with motivated and talented managers, but lacking critical sales leadership knowledge and skills. To address the issue, HP performed a managers assessment to establish their business needs: improving sales manager capabilities in strategic thinking and planning; ensuring managers are able to build plans that encompass every aspect of the business; and driving manager capabilities to build and ultimately execute plans that link specifically to key business metrics for quota and margin attainment. Fly High was developed as a general manager leadership program geared towards sales managers to enable them to align to the company sales competency model “Success Profiles” and perform at a higher level of competency. The goal is for managers to have master-level skills in planning strategy and driving execution.
As a result of the program, participants are strategizing, planning and managing their teams differently, using their time more efficiently and in a way that aligns with the company’s overall strategy. Analysis of quantitative data extracted from HP databases demonstrated higher sales performance among sales managers who participated in the program, compared to a similar group who did not:
- Topline Quota Metric: Enhanced Topline Metric attainment in H2FY10 and H1FY11, respectively, by 4 and 6 points.
- Margin Metric: Enhanced Margin Metric attainment in H2FY10 and H1FY11, respectively, by 6 and 5 points.
Navy Exchange Service Command
Virginia Beach, Virginia
PREMIER Customer Service Suite of Learning Tools
The Navy Exchange Service Command developed PREMIER—a customer service training program—when it was challenged to develop an innovative and creative program to compel its customers to bypass the competition, drive top line sales despite a limited customer base, and continue to meet the command’s mission of providing quality goods and services at a savings and to support quality of life programs.
The PREMIER Customer Service Suite of Learning Tools teaches customer service skills, customer service policies and procedures, and how to apply those policies and procedures to provide a positive shopping experience. The program which started in the retail business has been extended across the company’s business lines into personal services, hospitality, food services, and vending services.
Customer Satisfaction Index surveys and Associate Satisfaction Index surveys were administered annually to measure a variety of factors and provide a holistic view of opportunities for improvement. Results are used to assess progress and, more importantly, in developing an action plan for engaging customers. The program’s success is seen in increased customer loyalty, and retail and services sales have increased $179 million or 8.8 percent from 2008 through 2011.
SuccessFactors
San Francisco, California
Sales Success Mentor Program
Responding to long ramp times to quota and costly attrition, the Sales Success Mentor Program is a just-in-time, just-for-me sales mentoring initiative providing scalable, repeatable, and measurable business impact. A classic solution tailored to specific business challenges, it is also an innovative “situational mentoring” initiative embodying contemporary trends toward coaching versus training, ideal for sales audiences.
Mentors facilitate six months of 1:1 meetings and other regular contact to orient new sales account executives to the right people, processes and tools, identify and coach on skill gaps, share sales best practices, identify opportunities for development, and increase mentee productivity. In addition, mentors collect and analyze data on account executive behavior and performance to predict future success, which will eventually guide hiring criteria, coaching focus, and early intervention for underperforming new hires.
Results indicated that the program shortens ramp to quota, reduces attrition, enables rapid intervention with struggling new hires, led to the development of useful resources and system updates and enhancements that benefit the entire company, and supports account executives in areas most important to them.
