For any company, the prospect of growing, compared to merely maintaining market share, during tough economic times is truly daunting. With tightened markets, and more discerning customers, sales teams must rise to an array of challenges beyond those that are par for the course in a more stable economy.
But one company did just that.
Waste Connections, Inc. is a leading 29-state solid-waste handling services provider, with a sales team that is both geographically and culturally diverse. The challenges confronting the company included the realities of a highly competitive industry, in which competitors have consolidated and merged in a high-stakes fight for every account, along with internal issues related to culture and geography.
AchieveGlobal was honored to work with Waste Connections to build a more unified team around common sales skills, behaviors and languages. The results of the intensive strategy were profound, but perhaps most startling was that following the three-day boot camps, average revenue per new account increased almost 5 percent.
How is that possible, particularly in challenging economic times and such a competitive market?
Prior to the training initiative, Waste Connections struggled to present a unified sales front. As a result of past acquisitions, the company’s sales team originated from different organizational cultures, and therefore had little consistency of understanding and had great variance in their application of sales methods.
The challenge for us was to work with Waste Connections in the area of sales training to build on its existing strategy of bringing the organization together. The training boot camps were mission critical, and we worked hard to build that atmosphere, even incorporating camouflage clothing to build a sense of common resolve and intensity of purpose.
After the boot camps training continued on an ongoing basis so that, today, representatives throughout the organization are all living and speaking a common culture and language. That unity of purpose is what continues to build ongoing market success.
When times are challenging, it’s one thing to envision the possibility of improving sales despite the circumstances. It’s another thing entirely to understand exactly what’s required to turn things around, put training in place to build stronger team relationships, develop new sales skills, and actually “walk the walk” by increasing sales in a tough environment.
Sharon Daniels is CEO of AchieveGlobal in Tampa, Florida
