Each year the American Society for Training & Development recognizes individuals and teams who advance the knowledge of the workplace learning and performance profession and contribute to workforce capability and organizational competitiveness through their exemplary practices. Their work inspires and informs us all, and their accomplishments demonstrate how learning drives the performance of businesses and organizations worldwide. 

Here are this year's winners in the area of sales enablement.  

**Dual Skills High Competency: An Effective Way to Create a Human Capital Advantage

**

• Chailease Finance Co., Ltd.

  Taipei, Taiwan

In 1999, the Chailease Finance Company embarked on a mission to find a solution to subpar sales practices, risk assessments, and their detrimental effects on ROI. The company initially used a Business Process Re-engineering (BPR) project. The conclusion of the project was that gains could be made by separating the duties of sales promotion and risk assessment from one sales person to two employees and their respective departments (sales and risk assessment).

However, after a few years of this model’s evolution Chailease found itself with two departments that had conflicting mandates and a non-collaborative atmosphere. To remedy the issue a training program was created that focused on new sales associates and risk assessment officers. Its goal was to impart and integrate these two core competencies to each department. In 2005, Chailease began to develop the Dual Skills High Competency (DSHC) program.

After completion of DSHC, sales associates learned to assess risk assessment viability before submitting customer applications for a risk assessment officer’s approval. This raised the success rate of customers’ service applications and decreased rejected applications. With this practice in place defaults dropped steadily every year during the 2008 to 2012 period. Customers at risk of default were significantly reduced in the first year of implementation of DHSC and every year since, resulting in positive ROI. Since the practice’s implementation, the quality of new hires and their retention has also increased, greatly reducing hiring and training costs.

The ROI of the DSHC training program is 66 percent for all graduates one year after joining Chailease and completing training. These results are also reflected in the company’s bottom line.

Global Field Enablement

• Splunk

  San Francisco, California

A rapidly growing software company, Splunk needed to create a program that enabled new hires to ramp up quickly and efficiently. The solution was the creation of the Global Field Enablement—Field Onboarding Practice. Built from the ground up, with the input of experienced and successful sales professionals, the practice exemplifies a learner-focused program aimed at sales new hires and company partners.

The program started with a simple website linking to a handful of videos and webinars. In two years, it has grown to a rich resource that includes e-learning courses, certifications, mobile learning, and a closed loop methodology bringing all sales execution principles back to a field leadership coaching and development platform.

At the end of the onboarding program, sales reps are motivated to sell using the same methodology and process they are taught beginning on day one. Training content is designed purposefully, and is built for mobility. Splunk’s enablement team ensures all new hires demonstrate proficiency using a specific set of tools.

Enablement is collaborative at Splunk. The enablement team partners with others throughout the company, owns the deliverables, improves upon them as needed, measures the performance outcomes, and aligns to the needs of the business.

Training efforts are aligned with strategy and the team has the technical ability to deliver adjusted content to those in the field within minutes of a desired change in direction. Splunk has worked hard to scale and formalize a very successful onboarding practice. In doing so, it transitioned from a culture of silos and competition to a culture of supporters.

Managers are hungry for more classes and regularly ask the enablement team to create virtual modules on important content. Results speak for themselves. Sales representatives who have gone through the program have achieved more sales more quickly than their peers who did not go through the program.

Margin Management Maximization for Managers (4M)

• Hewlett Packard International

  Meyrin, Switzerland

• Quadmark

  Bracknell, England

In October 2010, the sales L&D team surveyed sales managers across the regions to assess proficiency in 12 key competency areas to set training priorities for 2011. The assessment framework took into account strategic business priorities, key sales roles, and 12 competency groups.

The survey revealed that managers did not believe that they had the skills necessary to successfully achieve the organization’s business objectives considering the challenging business environment resulting from the global financial crisis. A program was needed that could be developed and implemented on a modest budget to be delivered globally for sales teams across diverse regions focused on different market segments.

Margin Management & Maximization for Managers (4M) was developed to solve these issues. The program targeted sales managers, with the goal of creating a leadership and coaching approach to margin management, where managers took responsibility for developing their capabilities within their own teams.

A blended and continuous learning program for sales managers globally, 4M is designed to:

• identify the most impactful margin drivers across the Americas, Europe, and Asia

• refresh sales managers’ understanding of the margin drivers

• introduce sales managers to key coaching elements

• share current best practices

• build a culture of margin management.

As a result of 4M, HP has seen a 20 percent improvement in sales mangers exceeding their gross margin targets, driving an all- time record ROI for the program.

Sales Enablement

• T-Mobile USA, Inc.

  Bellevue, Washington

To introduce new services and products that address customer needs, T-Mobile needed to determine how it would quickly deliver training to 19,000 sales associates in more than 4,300 stores nationwide.

The training team needed to methodically organize which content it would pre-train, how learner participation would be monitored, how every sales person would practice what they learned, and how results of training would be measured. Success was defined as an increase in quarterly sales, a new and growing customer base, and redefined best practices in the industry.

To accomplish these goals T-Mobile defined pre-work for sales associates that included different training modalities and systems that helped the training team manage training participation. All 19,000 sales people were brought together for instore trainings that demonstrated what they needed to do.

Two weeks later, the in-store training district managers and sales trainers conducted a store blitz that compared instore Level 2 evaluations to the store blitz results (Level 4 evaluation). Everyone agreed on a single sales plan and the themes were reinforced and repeated.

The company contacted 30,000 new customers who had recently been in the stores to verify that the sales force followed the sales plan they’d recently learned. A month later, secret shoppers were sent into stores to evaluate them again.

The training team used the feedback from the store blitzes, voice of the customer, and secret shoppers to coach and provide additional training where needed. Results were impressive. T-Mobile saw their best sales in three years and the best sales in one quarter among its three biggest competitors.

**Sales Practices

**

• Turkcell iletisim Hizmetleri A.S.

  Istanbul, Turkey

• UFUKKOÇ Strateji ve Yetkinlik Gelisimi

  Istanbul, Turkey

Increasing competition is the name of the game for Turkcell. Advancing technology and clients’ diverse fields of business have made the services Turkcell offers more complex. In this environment, the corporate sales teams are expected to sell not just products but solutions that combine different technologies and products.

Turkcell faced the challenge of addressing blind spots within the sales team, increasing awareness of sales process diversity, and helping sales managers provide better performance feedback to their employees.

Evaluating the situation with corporate sales department managers, sales personnel, and HR, the learning and development team determined that to achieve the desired behavioral change it would be necessary to create an initiative focused on real-life applications that sales people encounter in their everyday work life. Learning would occur through feedback provided by an impartial consultant who observed the salesperson’s behaviors during these training scenarios. Managers were tasked to provide coaching that would help reinforce proper behavior.

The training practice was structured such that when the role-play scenarios were complete, the manager gives the salesperson feedback and the consultant gives the manager feedback about the quality and effectiveness of their coaching of the employee. It is a practice that allows the salesperson’s sales performance and the manager’s feedback performance to be evaluated together.

Implementation of the practice has had positive effects on business with sales increasing almost 10 percent. Customer satisfaction scores increased and solution sales rose 35 percent.