| Paradigm (part of EADS) beats target and builds pipeline from £18m to £70m with direct help from Powerhouse |
“When Powerhouse started to work with us we had less than £18m in pipeline and secured business and finished the year £2m below our target. Six months into our new year we have doubled our top line, already beaten our £26m target and we have a pipeline of £70m directly with the help of Powerhouse”.
Paradigm is a supplier of military-hardened satellite communications, primarily to the UK armed forces but also to a range of other Governments and organisations around the world.
“I was concerned that Paradigm was not transitioning fast enough from the initial period of marketing our capability around the world into the period of using that marketing background to make inroads into the sales arena.
The team was becoming comfortable with endless presentations and customer visits without actually moving the sales campaign forward. Coupled with this was a period of churn within the Paradigm sales team which was also destabilising.
Working with Powerhouse has made several important changes to the ethos within my team:
The sales force realise that many of the tools that we use (capture plans, country strategies, bid no bid forms) are actually valuable tools to help them develop the business rather than tools to help me manage them.
The marketing and communications team understands a lot more what their role is in within the business development process and are now working to take a more active role in the process.
We have started to populate all the sales tools and to review them as a team on a regular basis, providing account managers with valuable feedback.
The team has a greater understanding of the sales pipeline and how we can change what we do to first fill and then keep full the top of the pipeline with prospects that can then be filtered into real sales campaigns.
The team now has a much more focused attitude towards the sales process. Any activities not directly linked with the achievement of sales revenue are now considered wasted effort. There is a firm and consistent process in place now across the entire team to generate sales leads and to convert them into dedicated sales campaigns.
The work has been a 9 month process that tackled the big issues of how the team works together as well as the more tricky problems of individual sales techniques from each person within the team. This has helped people have a better understanding of what their strengths are, what their colleagues' strengths are and where they can work together to compensate for each others weaknesses.
The key advice that I have is to let Powerhouse help you become very clear of what the problems are before getting into any training. If the problems are real and fixable then a joint plan can be developed with Powerhouse to address each of the problems in a sensible order so that the team can see a gradual improvement in performance through the process. I did a significant amount of background work with Ian before I introduced the team to Ian and Tony at the first workshop.
A key factor, which for me was accidental but encouraging, was that at the very first workshop, all my team understood that we had a problem and welcomed the opportunity to be part of the solutions. Looking back, I think that ensuring you have team buy-in has a strong bearing on whether the programme is successful or not.
I personally have found the entire programme to be immensely valuable and for someone who is naturally cynical and suspicious of training that comes in the form of consultancy and facilitation, the assistance and advice provided by Ian and Tony to both myself and the team has been excellent. I would have no difficulty in recommending them to any team in a similar situation
Powerhouse are now helping us keep focused on what is important and developing further our sales skills with an ongoing Sales Academy for our sales and marketing teams.”
Andrew Stanniland
Director
Paradigm ( An EADS company ) |
|
