In a recent collaboration with a multinational fertilizer company, they were looking for a training intervention for their sales team. The training was targeted both at RSM/ ASM and TSM levels across all geographies for 240 sales employees.
Business Problem:
The company is already on a path of high growth and is aspiring to strengthen its sales leaders not only by focusing on sales planning and strategy but by enhancing their “Leadership qualities”. The organisation is looking at navigating on the ground challenges faced by the sales team in maximising business. At present, people at ASM / RSM level are driven by targets and gunning those they miss out on empathy and use strong words for their team. At work, the communication becomes more authoritative, leading to high attrition.
Diagnostics conducted:
It was first important to get an in-depth understanding of their role and responsibilities such as:
- Processes
- Various customer touchpoints such as
- dealers
- farmers
- retailers
- How is their typical workday
This would help us customise the sessions in light of the ground realities and challenges faced by the TSMs. The Catalyst team used a combination of market visits and stakeholder calls to observe and enhance understanding of ownership, sales approach / strategy, value creation, influencing, negotiation, emotional intelligence, and influencing.
The diagnosis helped us fix the objective of the training intervention to be focused on:
- How to empower others with accountability
- Reduce high-pressure, low motivation situations by practicing empathy.
People at the TSM level also needed to pull up their socks and start practicing standard and scientific ways of selling, create value at every level, and adopt a growth mindset.
The Program Design
The program design involved two major capsule modules—2 days for RSMs. The intervention started with an ASM/RSM batch in two different locations.
Phase 1: RSMs (Regional Sales Managers)
Day 1:
The first day was all about leadership qualities required when transitioning from an individual contributor role to a manager role. The key modules and activities were around:
- The First Quarter board game
- Building personal accountability
- Understanding career anchors so as to be able to motivate the team.
Day 2:
The second day was about
- Building psychological safety in the team
- How to build trust
- Handling difficult conversations
- Bridge: Board game on handling a multi generational workforce.
The workshop made extensive use of Case Studies and Role plays which emerged from the market visits and the stakeholder calls done by The Catalyst team. These helped in keeping the sessions more relatable and closer to participants daily work lives and increasing their participation.
Phase 2: TSMs (Territory Sales Managers)
Post the RSMs sessions we covered approximately 200 participants all across the country.
Key themes covered for the TSMs were:
- Understanding social styles
- Trust building
- Handling difficult customers
- Being accountable through The Accountability Ladder exercise
Each module was curated using a high-energy game-based approach, keeping in mind the profile of the learners. The activities were spaced out in such a manner that the participants could reflect and connect back to their daily planning and interactions with the distributors or retailers, also highlighting their accountability towards the organization.
Program Delivery:
The team Catalyst handpicked qualified senior trainers and conducted teach backs and assessments to shortlist the final trainers for whom a detailed TTT was conducted to ensure that they were completely hands-on with the entire program content and prepared to deliver the program.
A team of 6 facilitators was deployed for the immersive program. The role plays and the case study brought out the real struggle, and everyone got into the character, which made the solution easy. The TSMs understood the accountability gaps and made commitments to work on them. The program was driven from the top; hence, the business and the HR head ensured their presence almost at every location.
This has been the biggest intervention in the recent history of the organisation. The feedback for the entire project has been very heartening. While we have received stellar feedback scores for our sessions, we also have the satisfaction of seeing projects come to fruition and actual sales effectiveness go up, and participants have started implementing the learning. This was evident by a follow-up assimilation call that was done with the participants a month after the classroom session.
For more such sales journeys, reach out to us at info@thecatalyst.co.in