How we can help with your sales force effectiveness

Our team has decades of experience in helping organizations get the most out of their sales team, and can help you either design an entire new strategy from scratch or tweak an existing process to make sure it's still effective. No matter what, we'll develop tactical methods of reinforcement to drive sales strategy and ensure that your sales force is in a position to succeed through post-sales support capabilities.

Some of the factors of sales force effectiveness we'll help you evaluate include:

• Sales strategy development: We help companies develop strategies to target customers and increase revenue and profits.
• Sales force organization: We help companies build their organization (sales channels, job roles, reporting structures and resource requirements) to align with sales strategy.
• Sales strategy execution, metrics, and rewards: We build the tactical components to manage, measure and reward salespeople.
• Sales support: We help companies with the tools, messaging and support capabilities needed to implement sales programs throughout the organization.
• Sales compensation best practices: We'll arm you with the latest trends and data so you know how your compensation strategies measure up to the competition.

A sales force effectiveness success story

Here's an example of how our team helped one organization increase their sales force effectiveness and succeed in a highly competitive market.

The issue

A major utilities company engaged Sibson Consulting on a sales force effectiveness project to cut nearly 20 percent of their baseline cost. Revenues in this industry are relatively fixed but costs are variable. These costs are passed directly on to customers who may choose to reduce energy usage as their bills increase. Therefore, as costs increase, revenue may decrease. This utilities company wanted to get ahead of the utility “death spiral,” a term used for businesses leaving the operating area due to economic pressures.

The fundamental problem for this client was determining how to cut costs without reducing service levels or capabilities. The client needed us to validate or disprove their theories on the potential inefficiencies in staffing ratios, go-to-market strategy, and organizational structure.

Our solution

Our team focused on the core capabilities supporting the organizational mission, then recommended the removal and allocation of unnecessary resources. We recommended a number of different opportunities for cost reduction, including a new go-to market strategy and reorganized workforce.

The approved go-to market strategy hinged on a more sophisticated form of customer segmentation that was supported by a highly skilled team of experts to address key customers. Our approach aimed at increasing customer satisfaction and energy efficiency results by using fewer resources in targeted accounts. The reorganization used a spans and layers assessment to apply consistent best practice staffing ratios across the organization.

The result

The client continues to work with us to clearly articulate their mission and define their talent management program. Because the company was able to reduce headcount and costs by using this project as a platform, it prevented deeper reductions in the most recent layoffs and allowed the company to maintain key capabilities.