The Situation: An $18 million high-quality printer saw a 15% drop-off in sales over a two year period. Though the causes weren’t immediately apparent, it was clear the company lacked an effective process for managing sales. The company’s assignment of accounts and prospects was hit or miss, and there were no real standards for sales performance. It was clear that the company’s salespeople had been content with low levels of account penetration. As a third-level supplier for many large companies, when sales budgets were cut they saw a huge drop-off in sales. It was equally clear that salespeople didn’t feel accountable for pursuing prospects in a systematic and focused manner.

Our Approach: We helped the company to evaluate its entire sales (and sales management) effort. Specific performance requirements were developed for the sales manager, and we helped to develop a method of regular follow-up with the salespeople. We created a framework for assigning accounts and allocating prospects – with specific performance required to retain the accounts and prospects. Two non-performing salespeople were terminated, and their accounts were reassigned to more effective salespeople.

The Results: Within seven months, sales had completely recovered. And the volume was coming from much stronger client relationships. After terminating the two salespeople, every one of their worthwhile accounts had been retained. Two new $250,000 accounts had been developed from prospects that had been assigned to the two departed salespeople, and two other accounts were evolving from under $250,000 in volume to over $500,000. Three salespeople were well on their way to exceeding $2 million in sales for the first time.

More broadly, the company now had a much more mature and effective way of interacting with its salesforce, and seemed poised for further sales growth.