Impacted business of a global consumer goods company
Challenge
With more than 1000 dealers across India, selling multiple products to a variety of customers, the sheer scale and scope of ordering, replacing and re-ordering products were earlier done manually. With the advancement in technology and ease of implementation, a Smart Order (SO) system was introduced for the dealer network. It was envisaged that Distributor Sales Representatives (DBSRs) would be able to showcase the entire portfolio and take orders smartly. However, behavioural adoption, selling skills and effective usage became a challenge.
Impact
Advisory solution’s journey, along with the outcome was presented at the Crossfire Grand Finale with the representation of the entire leadership. The clear cut outcomes through the intervention were as follows:
Sales:16% increase in model outlet sales, as well as increase in traction of high-end panel TV in tier 2 & 3 cities
Product Knowledge Scores: Improved scores of the entire sales team
Setting up of a Learning Culture: Participation in online assessment improved from 75% to 95%, pan India
5D Approach
To address & overcome the challenges, Learning deployed its proprietary 5D approach:
- Need Diagnostic Study (NDS): As part of this exercise, Centum experts visited 10 different cities covering a mix of metro market, Tier 2, 3, 4 & also markets based on leadership, challenger & follower categories. In all they visited over 40+ outlets across categories
- Stakeholder feedback: The second part of deep dive, included meetings with key stakeholders i.e. Area Managers, Branch Managers, Regional Managers, Distributors & Product Heads
- Competition info: As part of the exercise, Centum team also visited outlets of our client’s competitors. The objective was to do benchmarking based on product line up
- Value selling: The focus of the sales team was more on price and less on value selling
- No enforcement of product knowledge: The entire emphasis of Sales team was on primary & secondary sales, with no focus on product knowledge
- No standard evaluation & categorisation: There was no standard mechanism to evaluate sales team and categorize them basis their product knowledge
- No structured skill building: No focus on upskilling of the team
- POSM guidelines were not being followed
- Knowledge and Skills Contest: Crossfire was developed
- Journey: The learning journey was designed to cover 700+ team members in pan India that included multiple levels – branch, regional, zonal, and national
- Regular online assessments: Monthly online assessments were designed with inputs from product heads with an objective of self-assessment
- Customised & blended learning journey was designed with assessments followed by Classroom intervention. All learning journeys were defined with a clear business KPI in mind
- Model outlet project: A fixed number of outlets assigned to all team members with an objective of improvement on display & FIS product knowledge
- Another biggest enabler for our client was the involvement of their leadership team in most of the intervention
- A project charter with clear timelines & responsibilities was defined
- 70:20:10 training delivery model was followed
- Sales team contest: The biggest enabler was the learning cum contest which helped the sales team to focus on product knowledge due to competition within the colleagues
- Continuous learning with a mix of CRT, OJT, online assessment & digital Learning
- Project review: Monthly review with National Training Head & Trade Marketing Head on improvement on product knowledge scores
