UK Telecommunications Company: Workforce Performance

Partnering with one of the United Kingdom’s largest telecommunications companies, Accenture, along with several partner suppliers, created and is delivering an 18-month training program for the telecommunications company that focuses on developing the capabilities of the corporate sales staff. The program will provide the corporate sales staff with the knowledge to move the company’s business sales up the value chain to senior-level customers, thereby helping the company boost the revenue and margins generated from the corporate customers and, ultimately, helping the company to achieve high performance in the years to come.

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In 2003, executives from the corporate sales area of one of the United Kingdom's largest telecommunications companies realized the company faced a major challenge that, if not addressed, could seriously threaten their ability to achieve high performance in the years to come. Quite simply, in the highly competitive business-to-business market, the company had to boost the revenue and margins generated from its corporate customers.

But to do so, the company had to transform itself from a provider of product solutions to lower-level employees into a supplier of end-to-end solutions sold directly to corporate chief executive officers, chief financial officers, chief information officers, and other such executives. A critical factor in the success of such a transformation would be upgrading the skills of key salespeople.

The UK telecommunications company began searching for a partner that could help set up a training program that would equip its sales staff with the knowledge to move the operator's business sales up the value chain to senior-level customers. This training program would have to teach sales employees how to analyze a client's business, understand a company's overall business strategy and devise appropriate mobile-communications solutions. The program also would have to teach staff how to sell these mobile-communications solutions to both senior- and junior-level executives.

The UK telecommunications company viewed Accenture as a natural fit for such a project for two principal reasons. By virtue of its position as a leading provider of high-level consulting services generally sold to senior executives, Accenture is seen as a role model for the type of selling approach that this company wanted to inculcate throughout its own sales force. And, the courses Accenture uses to train its own consultants are viewed as world-class and highly effective. After considering other providers of sales training courses, this UK telecommunications company determined that no other company had the experience and content that Accenture did.

The UK telecommunications company selected Accenture, along with several partner suppliers, to create and deliver an 18-month sales academy. The program focuses on developing the capabilities of the corporate sales staff in four main ways:

• Through relationship-selling techniques.
• By building board-room presence and working at more senior levels.
• By adopting a solution-selling approach.
• By learning to analyze a customer's business to configure a solution that fits its objectives.

The sales academy training courses are based on materials developed by Accenture's own internal sales academy. They are delivered in hotel meeting rooms close to the telco's offices around the United Kingdom by trainers from both Accenture and selected partners.

A key part of the training process was determining the existing capabilities of the company's sales staff. Before the training was delivered, Accenture worked with one of its partner companies to complete a skills assessment of all UK sales staff eligible for the program. The goal was to assess where people were on the value chain, where they needed to be, and what skills they would need to move up. Accenture was then able to determine the appropriate spot in the training curriculum for each salesperson—beginner, intermediate or advanced.

The company promoted the availability of the program to its employees in two ways: announcing it at the company's annual sales conference and discussing it as part of the personal training objectives set for the corporate sales team which mandate a certain number of training courses for each sales employee during a given year.

While many companies struggle to identify how their training programs affect the company's overall bottom line, this UK telecommunications company can draw a direct link between Accenture's sales academy and better business performance. Though the training program will not be completed until early 2005, it has already had a direct impact on both the company's revenue and its customer-satisfaction levels.

Specifically, the sales academy program has achieved the following:

• Complete assessment of 160 account managers' skill levels.
• Training plans developed based on these assessments.
• Delivery of 655 training days.
• Measurable uplift in the level of customer relationships developed.
• 4 percent improvement in customer-satisfaction scores over six months.
• 10 percent year-on-year increase in data-solution sales.
• 8 percent increase in new business.

With Accenture's help, the UK telecommunications company has been able to achieve higher performance in a core competence that is critical to its overall competitiveness—thus positioning it for success both today and in the coming years.