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Reference Stories
Medium-Size Services Organization — Training Business-to-Business
High-Impact Customer Service
Leading High-Impact Sales
Customization Services
Facilitation Services
Affected business description:
The client is a medium-sized organization that provides soft-skill training products and services to approximately 35,000 organizations nationwide. The organization uses direct mail, electronic marketing, telephone sales and field sales in their marketing and sales mix.
Business problem or business opportunity:
Marketing generated several thousand inbound calls per day into the client’s call center. These calls presented opportunities to cross-sell and up-sell the organization’s products and services.
Why did this problem happen?
Because the offerings were fairly complex, many decision makers were missing training opportunities or alternatives that could meet their needs, even though they were referenced in the marketing materials. The inbound call was the perfect opportunity to leverage additional sales via cross-selling and up-selling.
Initially, the customer service team resisted the initiative because they did not see themselves “in sales.” Compliance in asking for the sale was mediocre and the technique was more perfunctory.
What did the client want?
The client wanted to fully capitalize on the inbound opportunity with their existing customer service team. Goals were set including double-digit sales growth for the customer service department.
Special product for the initiative was also developed which was unique to the inbound call center and the cross-selling and up-selling initiative.
What did Business Performance Group’s product provide?
Together with senior management, Business Performance Group first created measurements for the customer service department which would provide a way of benchmarking progress towards the revenue goal. The team decided two major behavioral changes needed to happen. First, the customer service representatives needed to ask for the sale on every call. Second, the effectiveness of the sales process needed to be improved.
Business Performance Group provided training for the management team using the program, Leading High-Impact Sales. For an additional day, the management team and Business Performance Group’s facilitator created all of the deliverables for the initiative including Personal Business Plans, Call Outlines, Call Checklists and an A-B-C-D Management Plan.
When the management team was trained, a series of short, two-hour training courses were prepared to achieve the behavioral changes within the call center group. This included modules from the program, High-Impact Customer Service, as well as materials developed with the sales managers on the company’s products and services.
The goal was to make the customer service representatives comfortable in asking for the sale (behavioral change number one) and to improve cross-selling and up-selling techniques (behavioral change number two).
End result:
The department is on track to meet their goal of a double-digit revenue increase.