AROUND THE WORLD Why I studied sales p6 / Post Salesforce.com, Jim Steele’s bid to build another global sales tech giant p16 / AstraZeneca’s

transformation in Japan p40 / Developing CPM’s business in Asia p57

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Journal of SalesTransformation15 PAGES OF RESEARCH-BASED INSIGHT, INCLUDING: GROWING A CUSTOMER-LED CULTURE… ENTHUSIASM, ENERGY AND MOTIVATION… WHAT MOTIVATES ACCOUNT MANAGERS + SALES RESEARCH ROUND-UP

P14 INSIGHT P21 REFLECTION P42 SALES EXCELLENCE P46 STRATEGY

PROBLEM-SOLVING TOOLS FOR SALES MANAGERS

SHAREHOLDER VALUE IS MEASURE OF KAM SUCCESS

INSIDE VIEW OF OUR SALES TRANSFORMATION

USING BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT STRATEGICALLY

Prof Nick Lee Prof Malcolm McDonald Justin Cole Claire Edmunds

International Journal of Sales Transformation 4342 Q2 2016

Sales excellence

A measured approachJustin Cole

Two years ago Urgo Medical’s UK business embarked on a sales transformation. UK managing director Justin Cole maps out the journey.

Ours is a market in which suppliers cannot easily influence the total demand for the sector’s products: that’s a function of the clinical requirement for the treatment of wounds, and hence the need for

dressings and compression stockings in the community at large. However, what we absolutely can do is ensure that, through our product excellence, customer service, marketing and – above all – sales skill, we become the supplier of choice and the long-term partner of as many clinical buyers as possible.

Our market position up to 2013 was already strong, but not as good here in the UK as in other countries. We were 7th in terms of market share for advanced wound care dressings and, although we were already the market leader in compression products, growth was steady but undramatic at a couple of per cent per year; meanwhile, the cost-saving and procurement landscape is getting tougher for suppliers to the NHS all the time.

We saw the need, and the opportunity, to change up a gear and put a strategy in place to do it. We realised that, like any other area of business improvement, we could provide the desire but someone else would be able to offer the expertise. After an extensive competitive tendering process, that someone else was Huthwaite International.

We were very clear with Huthwaite from the outset that we didn’t just want our sales force trained in the right consultative, persuasive skill model; we also wanted to know how, where and when it was starting to change both the behaviour and the results of the team. So from the outset, both parties knew the results were going to be measured, and the measurements would be closely scrutinised. Huthwaite positively embraced that scrutiny.

How to articulate value?

Most customers for wound care products are busy district nurses or their equivalents with little time to devote to considering the added value of every product they use. The incremental merits of a specific patient solution, in terms of long-term outcomes and consequent savings of time, money and discomfort, don’t always sound so compelling if the alternative is superficially cheap and quick to buy. Our focus for the skill development had to be around building up that value for the greater solution, within those constraints.

To help us do this, the central Huthwaite methodology we implemented was SPIN® Selling, the world-famous and massively validated model that enables people to make persuasive cases for their products and services, based on proving that they understand, and can meet, their customers’ needs. This model uses a questioning framework to enable sellers to identify a true opportunity, extract the vital information, build a customer proposition, and get the customer to articulate the value of the product or solution.

We held an intensive weeklong training camp in spring 2014, during which Huthwaite trained us in the relevant elements of the methodology to make sure that everyone had the skills they’d need, and many of the digital reinforcement tools too.

In SPIN® Selling, a key indicator of proficiency by the seller and impact on the buyer is the use of “benefit statements” to describe precisely how the product or service will help particular customers solve the specific problem

they face, and what the payoffs will be. However, to have got to that point in the conversation, the seller will have had to probe the clinical professional on a variety of subjects: for instance, concerns over healing times or nursing staff shortages. A conversation that produces good benefit statements would go on to explore the value of finding a solution, and describe specifically and persuasively the better clinical and/or financial outcomes that would solve those precise problems, and exactly how that would be achieved.

Improvement metrics

Getting the questioning process right is one thing. But how did we know it was working in business terms?

In the spring of 2014, before they trained any of our people, Huthwaite benchmarked benefit statements per call per seller. Within a couple of months of the training events and the first coaching, the number had begun to rise by on average 33%. However, the important change is not just in the behaviour, but in the business impact.

A key measure is the comparison between what Huthwaite calls “advances” versus “continuations”. A customer telling us that they liked what we had to say and want to hold another meeting has not advanced the sale; this is called a continuation in Huthwaite terminology. Obtaining agreement to take some trial dressings and report back in detail on their efficacy by an agreed date is an advance – and it is only an advance if the client commits important people’s time, some resources, or some serious credibility to you. Having them commit to placing an order is even better.

Needs and benefits

To make benefit statements, sellers will need to increase the number of “explicit needs” they uncover. Explicit needs are what Huthwaite calls statements by the customer that they definitely and actively now want and value a specific solution to a problem that we have been able to identify and amplify.

If sellers are matching clear, well-developed explicit needs with strong benefit statements then the likelihood is that orders and advances will rise. And that is what has happened here at Urgo Medical.

Coaching

The behavioural and commercial improvement isn’t down to the training phase alone. An important aspect of Huthwaite’s whole approach was to plan for a SPIN® Journey in advance – one that we knew would be reinforced and sustained. A big part of this was – and still is – face-to-face coaching by our dedicated coaches Tricia Richardson and Sarah Summerson.

“Salespeople are coming back from calls and telling us that the conversation with the customer has gone to a completely different level, enabling a less transactional, more strategic, consultative relationship, from which bigger sales are the inevitable result,” says Summerson.

Results

The group with the improved ratio of benefit statements showed a massive improvement in advances. Less than a quarter of the benchmark cohort was achieving advances in sales calls pre-training. After the training, and just a few weeks into the world of SPIN® as an everyday sales tool, with improved scores for benefit statements (see Figure

International Journal of Sales Transformation 4544 Q2 2016

Sales excellence

1: Customers’ explicit needs matched to sellers’ benefit statements), the people in the latest sample were getting advances over 70% of the time, while 8% of those calls were resulting in actual orders (compared with none in the original benchmark group).

My training manager Farida Sollitt, also saw a discernible change: “As the sales team gained confidence in the use of SPIN® we saw a positive change in the call quality and also in engagement from the customer. The desire of the salesperson to rush in and excitedly talk ‘product’ before understanding

and acknowledging the real problems and needs of our customer is now something we see less of – a change has definitely taken place.”

Overall we’ve seen uplift of explicit needs and benefits (60% and 40% respectively) following the coaching and have increased the number of advances achieved by a factor of five (see Figure 2: Sales call outcomes), but the improvement has

also been there in the experience of the sellers themselves. Julie Robinson, an Urgo Medical Product Specialist says: “SPIN® has enabled me to have challenging conversations in a more objective manner, in a less threatening way. My customers feel listened to and able to share their concerns, giving me the

Not just training: “We wanted to know how, where and when it was starting to change both the behaviour and the results of the team.”

Explicit Needs Benefits

Benchmarkcalls

First coached calls after the training

Last calls in a sequence of at least three coached calls

1.5 per call

1.5 per call

1.7 per call

1.1 per call

0

19

20

27

39

34

19

5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40

2.4 per call

2.1 per call

Figure 1: Customers’ explicit needs matched to sellers’ benefit statements

Orders Advances Continuations No Sales

First coached calls after the training

1 1

4

10

Last calls in a sequence of at least three coached calls

1 16

Benchmark calls

2 3

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Figure 2: Sales call outcomes

About the author

Justin Cole has been Managing Director at Urgo Medical for three years and before that held a variety of senior roles in the medical device sector. With extensive experience of leading sales, marketing, clinical and customer service teams, he has successfully achieved superior outcomes by building and motivating teams and developing a culture of high performance through coaching and leadership.

opportunity to partner their decision and grow sales of Urgo Medical products.”

Cath Curran, our Healthcare Partnership Manager concurs: “SPIN® has given me an essential tool in order to plan, utilise and focus more on my calls. It allows me to question in a way that allows me to uncover true needs and understand the customer’s agenda. This in turn gives me credibility with my customers.”

Cultural change

For Farida there has been a “complete culture change” occasioned by the training, the coaching, and the innovative activities that SPIN® brought in its wake. We have a monthly SPIN® Doctor newsletter where the front-line team share their experiences, triumphs and challenges, and pool their knowledge. We’ve incorporated discussions of where the methodology can help, and is helping, into the “chatter” areas of our Salesforce CRM system; and there’s a steady flow of killer SPIN® questions circulated around the UK sales team.

Cherryl Morris, the Huthwaite account manager, has encouraged us to push the methodology further. At the original training camp, alongside the front-line salespeople, the marketing communications team went through a specialist workshop, looking at how the core SPIN® framework – and use of persuasive language – should be applied in their world: from social media to promotional literature, and from briefing agencies to dealing with the press.

Our marketing manager Robin Nicholson is clear: “This has been helpful in producing material and public messages that accord with our sales messages, giving the entire UK business a sales infrastructure we’ve never had. It’s a virtuous circle. The ‘users and choosers’ of products like ours are amenable to new ideas if we can be persuasive about them. This has helped us to be persuasive in all customer-facing parts of the business.”

Outcomes

In many ways, although the high watermark of Huthwaite International’s direct training intervention has passed, the effect keeps multiplying: we’ve advanced to fifth in the wound care pecking order; we’ve been able – on the back of our revenue and margin growth since 2014 – to expand our sales force by 35%; the average order size has increased; we are winning far more tenders and formulary* bids than we used to; we’re turning lukewarm “yes” responses into firm orders; across maybe 70 product areas where we had no sales to show in 2013 we’ve carved out six-figure customer contract wins, split between extended business from existing accounts and completely new business (see Figure 3: Sales revenue growth after training).

Moreover, Huthwaite remains involved. As we enrol new salespeople, we put them through open SPIN® events; the coaching effort continues apace; and we are looking at more advanced account opportunity management skills work together in future. I like to think that the UK operation is something of a trailblazer in Urgo Medical Europe, and this initiative with Huthwaite International – perhaps more than any other – has helped us to make the trail blaze brighter.

*Editor’s note: a formulary specifies which medications and other products are approved for prescription or use in a particular health system, based on evaluations of efficacy, safety and cost-effectiveness.

201520142013

+2.3%

2012

+19.6%

+15.4%

Figure 3: Sales revenue growth after training

We are winning far more tenders and formulary bids than we used to; we’re turning lukewarm “yes” responses into firm orders.