Supporting change with learning
Over the past few years, technology companies have been challenged by the slowdown in IT spending. The senior team at one high-tech Proteus client, seeing back-to-back quarters of declining sales after years of rapid growth, realized they needed to somehow return to profitability in a difficult market.The company had invested heavily in recruiting and retaining talent during the tight labor market of the late 1990s and didn't want to lose the competitive advantage of their highly skilled workforce. Still, profitability was a business imperative. If they weren't going to let people go, they needed to increase productivity.
Proteus and the client worked together to build the business by offering sales skills to employees outside the traditional sales force. We focused on the people whose jobs already involved customer interaction and who therefore had the greatest opportunity to develop sales relationships.
In order to save both time and money, we taught these employees skills drawn from our standard offerings for salespeople, with sales tools customized to their unique situation. This approach provided these "rookie" salespeople with both core skills necessary for successful selling and support to apply the skills on the job.
The rookies uncovered new needs from existing customers and secured referrals to new prospects. The sales situation stabilized, revenues increased, and the company was able to retain its valuable workforce.
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