Case Study
Sales mentoring
Insight
Mark* ran a privately-owned services company based in the south east. Growth was consistently positive, with a team now heading towards 20 people.
And yet…
Mark’s evenings and weekends were a blur of customer proposals and checking in on emails from team members. Sales were growing, but the bigger the number, the more it demanded of his time and emotional energy. Momentum felt hard.
He came to us asking if we could help convert that early stage success into a repeatable sales pipeline.
On the face of it, the solution he envisaged was about building a clear sales process with allocated owners. But underneath this it was about freeing him from that repeating owner/founder problem: Nothing big happened unless he personally drove it. It was exhausting and unsustainable.
*Name changed for confidentiality
Solution
In a three month advisory programme we:
- Rebuilt his sales plan, identifying the most reliable sources of new business and the wins he’d achieved through leadgen
- Assessed where the big deals came from – and how they could be scaled up by prioritising key account opportunities
- Redesigned the organisation structure to reflect the skills and passions of the existing team
- Reviewed gate stages in the sales pipeline to ensure the criteria set at each stage were measurable and consistently applied
- Scoped and supported recruitment of a commercial manager to free up client-facing sales time
Outcome
Business owners usually want our involvement to transform the way they work and this case was no different. With our help, Mark:
- Invested in a commercial manager, designed to pay for itself through faster customer response times and better sales conversion rates
- Integrated his approach to leadgen and seling so leads with best potential were prioritised – and those at risk qualified out quickly
- Rebuilt his client diary so he was involved in winning all the high priority deals – while his team led on the smaller, routine opportunities
- Improved sales forecasting, with a clearer assessment of what deals would convert when
- Improved team morale, with each sales team member given clear decision-making authority on clients within their remit
What started as a “sales process” project ended up completely redesigning the way the team worked internally and delivered to clients.
Most important, for Mark, growth no longer relies on late nights. It’s professional, organised, and runs on systems not on the founder.
