DWSL were contracted by a leading London based private equity firm to undertake commercial due diligence on behalf of one of their investment portfolio clients. The client was a global technology provider based in 10 locations, a turnover in excess of €100m and a Sales and Marketing organisation consisting of 80 colleagues. Revenues had been constantly declining over a period of 9 months and the organisation was projected to significantly miss its 2019 Financial Goals.
Terms of Reference
The initial engagement was for a 25-day consulting exercise with the following objectives:
- Provide an evidence-based understanding of XYZ Plc Sales and Marketing performance v. suggested vocational “best practice” and that already existing (where appropriate) in the XYZ Plc organisation.
- Provide a view of underlying reasons and behaviour for current “best” and “worst” practice.
- Identify any inhibitors that may be preventing best practice from current team.
- Identify areas for improvement in short and medium-term timescales in terms of approach, organisational structure, systems and people.
- Provide an assessment of Sales and Marketing Capability of Chief Commercial Officer, Leadership Team as well as the broader Sales and Marketing organisation.
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.
- Positioning, messaging and GTM for Solution and Telesales LOBs.
- Lead generation activities, qualification, opportunity management and close rates.
- Opportunity Segmentation, (key focus on management of existing customers v. new customer acquisition) to include team structure, roles, Account and Territory management.
- Talent Management – recruitment, onboarding, development and retention.
- System and MI effectiveness
Approach and Methodology
DWSL reviewed all internal and external collateral including: value propositions, websites, strategy documents, sales presentations, case studies, LinkedIn posts, the sales incentive plan and board minutes to provide an initial detailed understanding of the organisation and the issues faced. Structured interviews lasting between 60-120 minutes were then undertaken with the following key stakeholders:
- CEO
- Chairman
- CFO
- Chief Sales Officer
- CMO
- CIO
- Head of Strategy
- General Managers in each Region
- Selected sales and marketing colleagues in each Region
Finally, DWSL attended 4 weekly forecast meetings to understand how key performance data was collected and collated.
The information was then disseminated and the DWSL 10 x 10 Sales Competency Matrix was applied to identify Growth Inhibitors and provide recommendations to enable the commercial organisation return to best practice.
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
Recommendations
- Revised Sales Incentive Plan based on individual performance with team goals removed
- Revised forecast process based on revenue, with focus on “commit” and actions to fulfil KPIs by each forecast owner from bottom up.
- Creation of Account Planning template, specific to this business and a formal roll out across all regions with coaching provided to sales leaders to run their own subsequent sessions.
- Creation of Opportunity Management template and process for all opportunities of €50k and above. Sales Leaders coached to run the process in each geography
- Template created for references and use cases. Focus shifted from product features and vague deliverables to tightly defined, monetised benefits
- Increased focus on cross sell/upsell provided via Account Management process
- Number of accounts per sales person reduced to enable greater focus and generate incremental revenue
- Standardised Talent Recruitment/onboarding/development process implemented across all regions
- Consolidation of multiple CRMs into single system.
Deliverables and benefits
- Additional €1.1m of revenue and €229k GP delivered in first operating quarter
- Stronger, goal orientated sales culture clearly visible in each region with a stronger correlation between activityand reward.
- Sales incentive plan cost over €70k less to operate against previous plan despite significant improvements in performance
- Revised sales organisation with elimination of player/managers providing greater focus and accountability, together with a saving of €100k in colleague costs.
- Key wins in a number of existing accounts generating over €200k of incremental revenue
- Over 500 Accounts covered by a plan (previously it was less than 20)
- No major customers churned for the first quarter in many years
- Delivery of CRM and single view of the customer achieved within 6 months also providing a €50k saving in operating costs
