Briefed to increase the sales effectiveness of an Australasian technology sales team, Carpe Diem developed and executed a bespoke two-day sales training course and follow up program.
The brief
One of Australia's largest publicly listed IT companies, TechnologyOne, has been providing enterprise business software solutions for more than two decades. Developing, marketing, selling, implementing and supporting their own fully integrated software solutions, TechnologyOne's challenge is to ensure its sales teams are truly engaging with their customers across all software technologies the company offers, while capturing the unique sales opportunities they represent.
According to TechnologyOne's Operating Officer, Roger Phare, he was looking for more than just ad-hoc and non-specific training for his sales team and found it when he observed Carpe Diem's founder and managing director, Bruce Rasmussen, presenting at an industry conference.
Impressed with Bruce's extensive experience in IT and Carpe Diem's reputation for delivering tangible increases in sales effectiveness, Mr Phare engaged Carpe Diem to provide the customised training he was after: to enable the Australasian sales team to better capitalise on sales opportunities for each software solution.
The solution
Working together with Mr Phare in extensive preparatory sessions, Carpe Diem developed a customised two-day "Sales Boot Camp" aimed at TechnologyOne's customer relationship managers, enterprise sales and Best-in-Class sales people throughout Australasia.
Initially conceived as a means for new staff to learn TechnologyOne's sales principles and engagement methodologies, the course developed to become a valuable tool to grow the sales capabilities of the whole team.
Derived from Carpe Diem's successful Essence of Selling Solutions methodology - and tailored for TechnologyOne's specific products and services, Carpe Diem ensured content was relevant for TechnologyOne's specific market position and illustrated it with relevant, real-world examples.
The outcome
The successful two-day course resulted in 85 percent of participants giving the highest possible satisfaction rating overall.
"We had some great feedback from participants. Many were surprised that the course was so customised and targeted to TechnologyOne's software solutions environment,"said Mr Phare.
"Within two weeks, we had already applied the principles we learned, resulting in a decision to withdraw from a large deal we were never going to win and allowing us to focus our resources on more lucrative opportunities."
With 80 percent of the sales workforce expressing a strong desire to participate in the training, Mr Phare realised he had touched on a real need within his team.
"We plan to engage Carpe Diem to roll out training on a regular basis and we're currently working on a summary session of the course for regional and general managers from the UK, Malaysia, Australia and New Zealand."
