CUSTOMER SUCCESS STORY
How advanced sales methodologies helped close more business
A leading low-cost provider in the financial advisory services business started losing sales to the competition. It turned to us
for help with its sales transformation effort.
The challenge
Formalizing an ad hoc sales process
For years, this company had won sales because it was the low-cost provider in the market. Its calling card was small expense ratios on mutual funds and exchange-traded funds, and that was enough to keep the company at the top. This investment company never paid commissions to financial advisors or investment consultants to recommend its products to potential clients.
Eventually, the company’s competitors started catching up and threatening their business. That’s when, for the first time, the company’s sellers started realizing that they couldn’t count on their value proposition to make the sale. Instead, these sellers had to learn how to sell their products in an increasingly commoditized market.
But without a sales methodology, sellers were approaching each opportunity on an ad hoc basis. They lacked a consistent, competent approach to conducting sales calls or engaging in account or opportunity planning. As a result, the company continued to lose market share.
Partnering with Korn Ferry
A formalized process and universal language that
An increase in
assets under management to
a total of
A repeatable, scalable framework for
Improve sales effectiveness with formal sales methodologies and advanced selling skills
The solution
"Competitors started catching up and threatening their business.
The company was starting to lose market share."
Stronger sales performance and greater assets under management
The results
Our sales training and consulting services had a remarkable impact on the company’s sales results. Sellers started following a consistent sales process and using a common language to talk about deals. They recognized that their success depended on them following a proven sales methodology, including getting access to the economic buyer and establishing a valid business reason for buyers to attend meetings.
A formal sales process also helped sellers start using their time more efficiently, allowing them to focus on sales activities that help close deals, not time-wasting activities that didn’t move deals forward.
To date, the company has used our sales methodologies on thousands of opportunities. As a result of our sales transformation efforts, the company early on increased its assets under management to $2 billion—and its sales performance has only continued to improve.
Contact us to discover how we can accelerate your sales growth.
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One of the world's largest investment companies
An increase in assets under management to a total of
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02
03
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A repeatable, scalable framework for sales success
A repeatable, scalable framework for sales success
The return on investment
Background
A formalized process and
universal language that guides
every sales activity
We approached the sales transformation engagement with the company in three phases: enablement, deployment, and reinforcement.
Home Insights Featured Topics Sales Transformation
The company has nearly 17,300 employees globally and
30 million investors.
It prides itself on offering superior investment performance at a cost that’s about 80% lower than the industry average.
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Find out more about our sales and service solutions
Here, our goal was similar to that of a surgeon performing a transplant: ensuring that everything was aligned so the recipient’s body would accept a foreign organ. We worked with sales leaders to develop a cultural adoption plan that embedded new selling behaviors and workflows throughout the sales organization.
Enablement
deployment
reinforcement
sales success
guides every sales activity
A clear ROI on investment in our services
based on gains in won opportunities and assets under management
$2 billion
We trained sales leaders and sellers in three of our proven sales methodologies: Strategic Selling® with Perspective, Conceptual Selling®, and Large Account Management Process℠ (LAMP®).
Our Strategic Selling® with Perspective course gave the company’s sellers a proven sales process that helped them meet the changing expectations of modern buyers. In this training, sellers learned the sales processes and tools necessary to analyze a prospective buyer with multiple decision makers. More specifically, the company’s sellers learned how to uncover customers’ true needs and motives, so they could better prepare for the sale and address their customers’ reasons for buying. As a result, the company’s sellers earned the right to engage with prospective buyers earlier and more often in their sales cycle. Ultimately, this contributed to winning and growing deals — and to more of those deals being win-win for both the business and the customer.
Conceptual Selling® helped prepare the company’s sellers for more productive meetings with their buyers. We taught the company’s sellers how to engage in customer-centric conversations. Sellers also learned how to assess buyer needs and how to align their sales presentations to match their customers’ needs.
Our Large Account Management Process® (LAMP®) training focused on how the company’s sellers could build a winning strategy for their more strategic accounts. Sellers learned account management strategies, including data gathering, strategic sessions, and execution, to help them strengthen customer relationships, guard against threats from competitors, and avoid breakdowns in communication.
Finally, we offered several months of guided practice to ensure the transition to formal sales methodologies was sustainable. With guided practice, our team spent time with their sales team, serving as leaders and coaching sellers through real-life selling scenarios, as if we were their sales managers. We walked their sales leaders through account planning reviews and deal reviews following our methodologies and using our tools, so they could learn from us how to do reviews well. And we continued our coach-the-coach sessions over the next year and a half, just to help the change stick.
We trained sales leaders and sellers in three of our proven sales methodologies: Strategic Selling® with Perspective, Conceptual Selling®, and Large Account Management Process℠ (LAMP®).
Our Strategic Selling® with Perspective course gave the company’s sellers a proven sales process that helped them meet the changing expectations of modern buyers. In this training, sellers learned the sales processes and tools necessary to analyze a prospective buyer with multiple decision makers. More specifically, the company’s sellers learned how to uncover customers’ true needs and motives, so they could better prepare for the sale and address their customers’ reasons for buying. As a result, the company’s sellers earned the right to engage with prospective buyers earlier and more often in their sales cycle. Ultimately, this contributed to winning and growing deals — and to more of those deals being win-win for both the business and the customer.
Conceptual Selling® helped prepare the company’s sellers for more productive meetings with their buyers. We taught the company’s sellers how to engage in customer-centric conversations. Sellers also learned how to assess buyer needs and how to align their sales presentations to match their customers’ needs.
Our Large Account Management Process® (LAMP®) training focused on how the company’s sellers could build a winning strategy for their more strategic accounts. Sellers learned account management strategies, including data gathering, strategic sessions, and execution, to help them strengthen customer relationships, guard against threats from competitors, and avoid breakdowns in communication.
Finally, we offered several months of guided practice to ensure the transition to formal sales methodologies was sustainable. With guided practice, our team spent time with their sales team, serving as leaders and coaching sellers through real-life selling scenarios, as if we were their sales managers. We walked their sales leaders through account planning reviews and deal reviews following our methodologies and using our tools, so they could learn from us how to do reviews well. And we continued our coach-the-coach sessions over the next year and a half, just to help the change stick.