Sales Excellence program to establish a common foundation for future growth

The client is a leader in the Nordic region in multi-cloud solutions with a proven ability to realize digital transformation for companies and organizations with high demands on IT infrastructure, regulatory compliance, and cyber security. Employing approximately 1,400 people, this group achieves a turnover of about SEK 2.4 billion.

Following more than 10 strategic acquisitions over three years, the company sought to establish a common commercial model to support its growth journey. In addition to establishing a unified brand, the company undertook limited operational integration of the acquired entities at that time. Consequently, a new strategy was articulated to meet growth targets and enhance focus on larger customers and deals.

Given the varied operational methods of each acquired company, there was a clear need to agree on and align with one joint model and to perform a capability uplift. This would enable the sales organization to target new business and customer segments effectively.

Our management consultants played a pivotal role in driving the Sales Excellence workstream as part of an overarching transformation program. The goal was to adopt an agile approach with prioritized deliveries each month, ensuring the continuous introduction and implementation of new assets across the organization.

• A common customer segmentation model and a joint prioritization of “most wanted customers” to improve the customer engagement throughout the customer journey and secure the right sales resources for each customer and prospect.
• A standardized marketing and sales process and common ways of working throughout the customer journey to boost the return of marketing investments, secure a smooth customer experience and optimize internal efficiency.
• A common organizational blueprint and role descriptions for the sales organization to align sales resources and create a base for performance management. Organizational mapping of the new roles was performed and calibrated across regions according to Willis Tower Watson methodology.
• One common incentive model for attracting, developing and retaining the right people and incentivize performance in line with the strategy. Design of the incentive model, simulations of economic consequences and anchoring of the model in the organization.
• A common sales governance with agreed objectives, targets, and KPIs established for the sales organization and a follow-up of the sales pipeline.
• Adjustment of the CRM system to support the new ways of working and to digitalize and automatize process flows and decision-making, such as opportunity probability scoring, customer segmentation and most wanted customer classification. Requirements setting, testing and launch of new CRM functionality.
• Training of the sales organization in the sales excellence model and CRM system.

The aim was to realize value during the project by using an agile project approach and an inclusive way of working. Therefore, it was important not to design complex structures with the potential of realizing value after implementation. The effect was significant, and the number of won deals with MRC (Monthly Recurring Charge) above 100 kSEK increased by 100% between H1 2020 and H2 2021. In addition, the average MRC value improved approximately 10% during the same period.

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