Industry: Management Consulting

Client:

A growth-oriented, multi-million dollar, hard-sales-driving management consulting firm.

Challenge:

The firm had outgrown its service-line based sales force strategy, as revenue per salesperson, cost of selling, and client complaints were beginning to hurt profitability and growth. The client also faced the added problem of a compensation system that discouraged senior managers from accepting an overall profitability measure rather than a per service-line profitability measure.

Intervention:

Wellesley Hills Group's consultant approached this challenge by:

• Engaging a detailed analysis of client buying patterns, service cross-selling opportunities, and actual selling costs for the firm
• Evaluating the individual sales representatives to determine how ready they were for success in an account-based selling approach
• Reviewing and overhauling the firm's compensation plans to refocus sales efforts in more productive and profitable ways

Results:

Working with the Wellesley Hills Group consultant, the client:

• Established a key-account sales structure to focus the strongest sales representatives on current clients and potential clients with the greatest revenue growth potential
• Created a sales support system
• Increased service-line knowledge and skills training
• Developed a new sales professional skills profile to help the firm with the future hiring of sales representatives

Within the first year, the firm also:

• Increased key account revenue by more than 200%
• Witnessed significant growth in repeat sales
• Saved 15% in selling costs
• ncreased per sales representative revenue productivity from an average of $300,000 to an average of over $500,000 in six months, with a run rate average of $1.2 million per sales rep