SellingPower.com
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Sales Management Newsletter
Tuesday
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April 1, 2008
How to Get Your Reps Comfortable Speaking the Language of Business
Over the past decade, the sales profession has been transformed by the shift to consultative selling. Today, salespeople strive to sell value versus price and to engage executives rather than purchasing departments. Their level of success in achieving this goal often comes down to one thing: business acumen. "It is critical for sales personnel to have a high level of business acumen," observes Steve Sullivan, customer value manager of sales efficiency for International Paper (www.ipaper. com). Sullivan defines business acumen as a sales professional's understanding of how customers make money and the ability to use this understanding to position his or her products and services. It also encompasses the rep's ability to align customer strategies with those of his or her own organization. Sullivan would know. Just a few years ago, his company was using the same old transactional sales methods it had always used. A customer would call to ask about the price for delivering a certain amount and type of paper. An International Paper rep would quote price and availability and the caller would either take it or leave it. "There was nothing about strategic planning, the relationship, where the person's business was going," recalls Sullivan. All that changed as the world shifted to favor electronic forms of communication. International Paper recognized its success depended on a similarly radical transformation. Most notably, its sales organization needed to become more consultative; its sales reps needed to understand their clients' business and financial issues. But how? The company decided to conduct business acumen training using Paradigm Learning's Zodiak速: The Game of Business Finance and Strategy. Zodiak is a one-day simulation that teaches sales professionals to speak the language of business. During the program, participants think like CEOs as they sign for bank loans, attract investors and deliver products to customers over a simulated three-year period. They handle problems, make decisions, analyze income statements and balance sheets, and are shown the impact of their choices. Paradigm customized the workshop to use International Paper's data and strategies. It also added a second day of training that focused on customer scenarios, using real International Paper customers and their strategies.
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Today, more than 200 members of International Paper's sales team have undergone business acumen training. Every one of them is now comfortable talking about margins, equity, depreciation and capital investments; they know how to compute and analyze key financial measures and ratios; they realize how certain strategic issues impact the bottom line. Moreover, since the initial training used real International Paper data, reps understand how their everyday decisions impact the financial performance of their own company. "Knowing what was critical to International Paper's success, and then aligning that with customers, improved everyone's margins," says Sullivan. Sullivan says he saw results on an individual level within 60 to 90 days of a sales rep finishing business acumen training. But it's the cumulative impact of the training on the company as a whole that's been most significant. International Paper benchmarks its return on investment against 11 other companies in the industry. In 2003, prior to undertaking the business acumen initiative, International Paper ranked ninth. Its ranking then began a steady climb: sixth in 2004, fifth in 2005 and second in 2006. In 2007, it won the Stevie® Award from Selling Power magazine for Best Sales Training Program. "Once our salespeople understood the financial impact of their actions every day, a lightbulb went off," Sullivan concludes. "It was easier for them to engage, and then articulate back to the customer, how International Paper solutions were helping them win in the marketplace." For more information about the Zodiak program, visit www.paradigmlearning.com.
A B O U T PA R A D I G M L E A R N I N G Paradigm Learning (www.ParadigmLearning.com) is a privately held company based in St. Pete, Fla. Since 1994, it has worked with more than half of the companies on the Fortune 500 list, creating award-winning business games, business simulations and Discovery Maps® to address a company’s specific business needs. Its flagship business acumen training program, Zodiak®: The Game of Business Finance and Strategy, has been played by more than one million people worldwide. Other products address such issues as talent management, employee alignment, leadership accountability, building teams, project management and organizational change.
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