Telecommunications Sales Force Automation

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The Context

The Mid-Markets Channel of a global telecommunications company completed it best revenue year, thanks in part to the implementation of a new strategy, and the executive team wanted to continue the accelerated growth curve.

The Problem

The increase in revenue for the channel, consisting of 2,000 sales and service representatives, was largely a result of a 53-branch rollout of the channel’s new operating model. The new model helped increase sales and service representative activity by 45% and sales by 32%. Raising the bar again required new tools.

The company had tried, and failed, on three earlier attempts to introduce sales force automation to its 1,200 sales representatives plus sales managers. The company believed that sales force automation would be part of the answer and recognized that the cost, both financially and in terms of credibility, made the stakes high for a fourth attempt. On the heals of a successful 18-month initiative to implement the channel’s new strategy and organization, the executive team recognized that bottom-up behavioral change was essential and engaged the same team of  “outsiders” to lead the sales force automation design and implementation effort.

The Solution

The timing was ideal. Presenting the sales force automation (customer relationship management) initiative as an opportunity to automate the new processes and behaviors of the field sales force and to equip the sales managers to monitor and manage those new processes and behaviors provided a logical basis for the new technology.

The Approach

The approach consisted of four steps:

  • Customize and test the technology to support and integrate with the newly-deployed sales model.
  • Modify the sales process to integrate with the technology and capitalize on the automation.
  • Implement sales territories to faciltate and manage market penetration.
  • Introduce the sales automation technology in three pilot branches, followed by full deployment across the sales channel.

The pilot involved 20 sales managers and more than 100 sales representatives in 11 locations.

The Results

The pilot was successful, based on the following selected metrics:

  • Sales per representative (compared to non-pilot branches),  28% increase;
  • Sales quota attainment (compared to channel average), 363% increase (40% in pilot locations compared to 11%); and
  • Annualized incremental revenues, $19 million.

The automation scope included prospecting, funnel management, activity management, and territory management and dramatically improved monthly sales forecasting and market penetration analysis. The automation reinforced the earlier strategic change implementation and helped internalize new and desired sales manager and sales representative behaviors while increasing the productivity and effectiveness of both.

Telecommunications Sales Force Reorganization

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The Context

The client was, and is, a major global telecommunications company who had recently received a new strategic plan from a major global strategic planning consulting firm.

The Problem

Internal efforts to implement a new organizational structure and strategy failed. Adoption by dozens of domestic field offices had no traction and did not produce the increased focus on acquisition and retention of customers. The fundamental strategy called for the client to shift from a geographical orientation to a customer-centered focus, resulting in acceleration of new account acquisition (‘new logos’) and retention and growth within established accounts. Improving customer service relied on changing mindsets of the sales organization and the field service team with enhanced alignment of the sales and service elements in each branch.

Simply having a new strategy did not yield increased sales productivity and revenue or service level gains desired by the client and anticipated by the strategy consulting firm.

The Solution

The consulting team used representative locations to identify existing technology, sales and service processes and organizaation, and management techniques. The team developed consensus on best practice business processes among the representative locations, created and  implemented new management techniques and reward andrecognition tools, and developed training materials to support standardized processes and terminology and the new business model.

The Results

Across two years following the initiation of the strategic plan implementation, the client reported the following results:

  • Initial meetings with prospective new accounts, 36% increase;
  • Total sales meetings held, 45% increase;
  • New client proposal presentations, 30+% increase;
  • Annualized labor productivity (measured in initial four offices only), $2.1 million;
  • Combined average activity (sales and service), 45% increase;
  • National sales channel productivity, 45% increase;
  • National sales channel per-representative sales, 32% increase valued at $1,500,000 in added sales per month.

Reservations Center Reengineering

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The Context

The world’s leading hospitality company’s worldwide reservations organization, consistently recognized as “best in class,” had a challenge. Franchisees were beginning to express concerns about growing chargebacks to the properties, as measured by cost per reservation, and sought improved value from the centralized reservation network. Despite this growing concern, the client received consistent recognition as the LOWEST COST, HIGHEST CUSTOMER SATISFACTION provider in its industry.

The client pursued a consulting engagement to avoid a performance crisis within a long-standing commitment to aggressive continuous improvement. The objective was implementation of a strategic transformation to improve selling effectiveness while protecting the client’s world-class status with respect to service and cost. The scope and scale involved four reservation centers across the United States employing 1,600 associates year-round and 2,000 seasonally, handling more than 20 million calls annually – on a combined 24 hour, 7 day per week basis.

The Objectives

The overall objective was to create a model for sustainable continuous improvement across three key areas:

  • Sales effectiveness:  Significant improvement as measured by the conversion of inbound calls into room reservations and by the revenue generated per reservation.
  • Productivity and Performance Variability:  Reduce the gap between high performers and low performers and raise overall productivity, as measured by calls handled per associate hour.
  • Performance Measurement and Management: Align and integrate essential support processes for planning resources, routing calls,  and measuring associate and center performance compared to plan and budget.

The underlying challenge was was the sustainable transformation of the organizational culture to sales, revenue generation, and customer service from answering telephone calls and taking customer orders.

The Solution

The implemented solution consisted of three integrated elements: organization-wide goal alignment, a daily performance measurement and management system, and a human resources development system based on expert behavioral models.

  • Goal alignment throughout the Reservations operations re-focused efforts on revenue generation, putting “heads in beds,” and productivity rather than work rule compliance.
  • Top performing associates shared Good and Best Practices to create Expert Models for use in associate assessment, continuous improvement plan development, recruitment, selection, and training. Supervisors, trainers, and managers conveyed the defined and accepted attributes of success to new associates and to sub-optimal performers.
  • Supervisors and managers re-focused attention on bottom quartile performers and new associates using the Expert Models as coaching guides, which increased likelihood of associate success and allowed for early identification of mis-fit hires.
  • Re-designed performance appraisals, aligned with the Expert Models, supported new performance expectations, rather than work rule compliance.
  • A customized database application, which pulled data from seven distinct sources, measured performance on individual, team, and brand bases and allowed managers, supervisors, and individuals to monitor and manage daily performance versus budget-based goals.
  • Supervisors and managers targeted variances in performance within teams and provided timely coaching to lower quartile performers, which dramatically and quickly improved team and reservation center performance.
  • New database tools reengineered the process forecasting, scheduling, and staffing processes, enabling the reporting of actual volumes versus plan, the redesign of accountabilities, the implementation of an Early Warning System to automatically flag eleven critical out-of-tolerance conditions related to staffing and call routing between centers, and the expandsion of service level reporting, which captured performance over the full range of customer service attributes.
  • A new self-funded incentive program for associates, contingent upon individual, team, and center sales effectiveness and productivity, reinforced the new behaviors among associates, supervisors, and managers.
  • The implementation of a closed-loop continuous improvement process assured goal alignment and continuous stretching,  measurement and remedying of performance variances, and reward and recognition consistent with revenue and productivity goals.

The Results

Sustained cultural change was the most dramatic result, with random calls to the toll-free reservations numbers confirming sustained use of the new systems more than six years following the conclusion of the project. Measureable results included:

  • Improved performance against four major metrics of 30-40% each.
  • Increased front line “managing” capacity by 45% through job redesign.
  • Reduced Resource Planning Process variability by 20%.
  • Reduced unit cost through associate productivity improvements – valued at $1.2 million annually.
  • Increased call conversion performance – worth $1.6 million in cost per reservation savings and $16 million in incremental annual revenue.
  • A return on the project investment of 300%, which exceeded targets by 70%.

Performance improvement consulting

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Implementation of change is sometimes strategic and sometimes more tactical in nature. Managers in most organizations have a general responsibility to control, and often reduce, costs and improve performance. Understanding the responsibility to do that is more common than
managers knowing how to do that.

The first trigger of the need for performance improvement for most managers is a report indicating performance that does not meet expectations, usually the budget. In that regard, many managers use financial reports to manage operations. The problem with financial reporting for operational performance management is that many organizations do not budget at a detailed enough level to be useful for most operational management. As a result, many managers find that costs, either material or personnel, are higher than expected, on a gross or per-unit basis, and must start an examination of the operation to identify the real, root cause of the problem. Many managers have neither the training or experience nor the time to successfully perform such an analysis.

Many organizations collect data and keep it in inaccessible forms, often paper. To successfully identify root causes of problems, or even identify the actual rather than the perceived problem, organizations need ready access to historical operating and financial data. Ideally, organizations will develop and maintain an electronic data warehouse that provides easy access to every piece of data that the organization collects. For too many organizations, nearly 30 years after the introduction of the PC, the only data warehouse they maintain is a decentralized set of filing cabinets.

A serious look at sustainable performance improvement takes more than a plan to chop the payroll. The 1950s through the early 1980s saw the rise and the beginning of the fall of so-called productivity consulting firms. Some of these firms did good work; I worked for two such firms, but many simply sold the client a promise to reduce costs by reducing payroll, often in a predetermined ratio to the firm’s billing. The good firms improved productivity by actually improving the processes of the client operation.

As the world entered the 21st Century, consulting firms and clients faced a reality that they had already capitalized on most of the easy improvement opportunities. Since at least the most recent turn of the century, performance improvement has been more sophisticated, more strategic, and more tactical. Lean and Six Sigma tools provide great insight into improvement opportunities. Rigorous data analysis, in many cases relying on data stored in 4-drawer vertical file cabinets, archaic data warehouses, adds substance to the scope and scale of the opportunities and provides evidence of actual change.

Operational improvement that is strategic usually appears in the company’s financial statements somewhere. Some improvements may appear
in human resource, environmental, or other non-financial sources. Because today’s performance improvement consultants generate results that are not limited to payroll costs, a Balanced Scorecard or management dashboard may be useful to many companies seeking performance improvement. Whichever the company selects, the reporting tool should have a view or a report or page that highlights the financial and non-financial impact of performance improvement efforts.

In 2007, eProcesses Consulting helped a mining client develop a dashboard that included links to dozens of performance improvement projects, some of which the consulting team initiated and some of which the client initiated. The dashboard included a summary page showing the status of each project and allowed drill down to each specific project to facilitate timely examination of each project’s detailed history and plans. The dashboard linked each project to corporate and location-specific goals for the year. The dashboard also enabled the management team to identify new projects to address new needs and opportunities.

The next generation of this dashboard will include a workflow automation tool to help automate semi-manual processes while providing real-time process reporting. The dashboard of the future will include built-in diagnostic to alert managers of the need to focus attention on specific performance anomalies. The next generation may be closer than you imagine.