Following the successful Sales Transformation Consultancy work at XYZ Plc Ltd, a Medium Sized Technology Provider, DWSL were invited to provide an Interim Chief Sales Officer until a permanent candidate could be hired. David Watts, a Senior Sales Leader with over 20 years’ experience at Oracle, Sage, EMC, Capgemini and Siebel Systems was appointed on an initial 4 day a week contract, subsequently extended to 5 days a week for a total period of 5 months.
Terms of Reference
- Undertake responsibility for the leadership of the sales organisation consisting of 80 colleagues across 6 geographies
- Own the Revenue and GP forecast with a specific objective of closing the Q4 gap to budget
- Roll out all of the recommendations made by DWSL during the consulting engagement
- Manage and oversee the FY2020 planning process
- Identify and interview suitable candidates for the permanent CSO hire
The key areas of focus
- Revenue Growth
- Customer retention
- Increasing revenue share of existing customer wallet
- New Customer acquisition
- Sales and Marketing organisation: operational effectiveness, including leadership management, forecasting, cadence, management and planning.
- Pipeline build and close rates
- Opportunity Management
- Account Planning
- Talent Management – recruitment, onboarding, development and retention.
- Underlying technology
Problem
- Declining Revenues for previous 9 months
- Absence of target culture across the commercial organisation with a team-based sales incentive plan
- Poor forecast process, largely descriptive narrative with little challenge or change outcomes discussed
- Lack of adequate Account Planning process
- No formal opportunity management process
- Inconsistent Go to Market with collateral focused on feature/function rather than business benefits
- Major focus on New Customer Acquisition rather than Cross Sell/Upsell
- Inconsistent Talent Management plan across each of the Geographies
- Lack of single view of the customer: 9 different CRMs
Deliverables and benefits
- €2m of incremental revenue and €500k of GP over 5 trading months
- Revised Sales Incentive Plan, trialled initially in the UK, cost/benefit analysis undertaken and then rolled out globally from 1st January upon commencement of the new trading year.
- Implementation of a robust forecast process, remotely managed via Zoom, based on revenue, with focus on “commit” and actions to fulfil KPIs by each forecast owner from bottom to top of the sales organisation
- Sales activity reviewed weekly with corrective action taken to ensure performance maintained
- Management of Account Planning process via zoom with over 100 accounts reviewed
- Implementation of Opportunity Management template and process for all opportunities of €50k and above. Sales Leaders coached to run the process in each geography
- Implementation of social selling predominantly using LinkedIn
- Revised sales organisation resulting in more focused, incentivised team, and over €100k in cost savings
- Recommendation and selection of permanent CSO
- 10-hour, remote onboarding process for successful candidate to enable them to make immediate impact at the start of “lockdown” during Covid-19 pandemic.
