[REX] Figaro Classifieds switches to consultative selling thanks to sales training

Lise Ferret, Head of Human Resources, and Benoît Malraison, Deputy Employment Director, give us their feedback on the sales training program implemented with our consultants.

1- What triggered your sales and management training project?

Lise Ferret:

From an HR point of view, we have a sales force with a predominantly senior profile, and most of them are very experienced, with the risk of operating after a while partly on habits. They receive regular in-house training, but we wanted to go further, to push them out of their "comfort zone" and discover that they still had challenges to meet in their professional practices.

At the same time, in 2015 the Employment Division initiated an internal reorganization of its sales force. In particular, this resulted in a new breakdown of customer portfolios: we moved from a breakdown of customers by business sector to a breakdown by portfolio size. We felt it was necessary tosupport our teams in this new organization and in the change of posture it implied.

Benoît Malraison :

Until recently, we lived on a form of rent... Today, in a mature market where competitors are more numerous and customers much less in demand, we are much more in a "real sales act".

We now have pure "hunting" sales teams, entirely dedicated to winning new customers. The vast majority of these teams are made up of new recruits, who have not yet fully mastered the internal reference system. The aim was to reactivate the most advanced sales techniques to enable them to perform rapidly.

They coexist with sales teams more dedicated to the follow-up of our historical customer accounts. The other objective was to provide a common frame of reference for our different teams, and a methodology for our entire sales force.

2- How was the link made between this reorganization of the sales force and the training program implemented?

Lisa Ferret: The aim of the new organization was to avoid dispersing efforts and to achieve a more efficient sales organization.

Our job is to help our customers find the best solution to their specific recruitment problems, according to their market and objectives, not to sell them our offers!

It's this consultative approach that we wanted to develop among our sales people: how to bring value to our customers and enhance our expertise.

 

Benoît Malraison: The training program and the reorganization took place simultaneously, but one could have taken place without the other, and vice versa.

The fact that we have oriented our sales teams towards a specialization is not directly connected to this training approach, which has always existed with us and which aims to ensure a high level of sales methodology for all our teams.

But since we were "putting the hunt in the spotlight" on this occasion, this naturally led us to place even greater emphasis on the sales techniques needed to perform, and in particular on mastering the structure of a sales meeting.

3- How did the collaboration go?

Lisa Ferret: In practice, training sessions took place throughout 2015. In all, they involved 80 people: sales people, managers and sales directors.

The proposed program primarily involved sales managers and a number of key account sales staff : they were to become more proficient in complex sales, using the "Méthode de l'Echiquier©".

The entire sales force was then trained in the fundamentals of the "value selling" approach, and managers were trained in field coaching.

The involvement of managers was a major factor. It was important for them to share the same language, to guarantee the scope and impact of this training later on.

 

Team buy-in came naturally. The method has brought them to a higher level of mastery in their trade. It's motivating for them!

Benoît Malraison: It's a little early to give figures: we've scheduled a debriefing and follow-up session in the near future, to define how we're going to capitalize on the actions already carried out and continue to upskill our sales forces in 2016.

The next step is to provide individual, tailor-made follow-up for training beneficiaries, depending on their level of appropriation of the method: some sales reps are in the process of acquiring the method, while others have already made it their own.

4- How do you measure the contribution of the KESTIO system?

Lisa Ferret: The roll-out of the training was accompanied by the introduction of an evaluation grid for our sales reps' prospect and customer interviews.

This evaluation grid is a concrete and highly effective tool for putting the method into practice, a real day-to-day monitoring tool that makes the link with the method and encourages its immediate application.

In addition to enhancing the skills of our sales staff and managers, this training course has also helped to build cohesion within their teams, with senior and junior staff sharing the same language and challenging each other.

Benoît Malraison: I measure the impact of this system by regularly accompanying team members in the field, and of course by studying their results statistically.

I also make great use of the evaluation grid we developed with your consultants, which really is our reference tool: I use it systematically, and its adoption by all Sales Managers is a real challenge, both in terms of monitoring/steering and coaching salespeople.

We can already see that the teams dedicated to conquest are performing well and achieving the objectives we had set ourselves internally: since these are the most recently recruited employees, we can largely attribute this performance to the contribution of the method.

 

At this stage, we can already see that it has borne fruit with the sales staff, who have assimilated the method in the quickest and most complete way!