Hiring and training new recruits was a costly process for leading multi-sited home improvement company HomeCo’s sales team, and helping those already in post to push through often-long-winded lead conversion processes was even harder.
Asked to devise a solution, Creating Dynamic’s founder Adam Johnson proposed a series of psychometric assessments that could help the group understand themselves, each other and, most importantly, their prospects at a whole new level, and ultimately deliver more sales.
To protect client confidentiality, all names have been anonymised in this case study.
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Building relationships, closing deals
Relationships are key in sales, so it’s imperative that individuals and teams are equipped with everything they need to build the kind of winning connections that help them convert.
This was proving a challenge for HomeCo. Lockdown had been kind to the company, which had seen an increase in leads and sales during the pandemic-enforced shutdowns. But as society reopened, people were more hesitant to make purchasing decisions on significant investments and deals were slower to close.
Adding to HomeCo’s problems was the process of finding new staff. As is the case with many companies, the cost of bringing in fresh faces doesn’t stop at recruitment fees and wages: training requires additional budget, as does sourcing the new leads required to help them cut their teeth. The need to make the right recruitment decisions was essential so as not to waste time and financial investment.
The combination of these factors meant that every lead really counted to HomeCo, and the sales team needed to do everything in its power to convert them.
Discovering insights
Mark, HomeCo’s Sales Director, wanted to invest in learning and development. He knew that by giving his team a new suite of tools that would help them understand themselves, each other and their prospects better they could build stronger relationships and convert more leads.
Mark and the team were already familiar with psychometric assessments at a very basic level, and they were quickly identified as a viable path forwards. Following a strategic consultation, Adam proposed the introduction of three assessments that would help the team develop a robust skillset and equip them for success:
- Insights Discovery, which helps people understand themselves and others at a personal level
- Belbin Team Roles, which helps people understand themselves and others at a professional level
- Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode, which helps people understand how they and others react in conflicts and negotiations.
The process started small. The three assessments were completed on a couple of new recruits and one-on-one coaching sessions were put in place to help them understand the results and take ongoing learnings from them. While the one-on-one sessions remained confidential, Adam discussed the findings of the psychometric assessments with Mark so he could understand the new starters’ strengths and areas for growth.
With this trial completed and showing strong signs of success, Adam devised a day-long development session that would introduce the assessments to the whole of the Sales team. Each person took the necessary evaluators prior to the day and results were provided and interpreted during the day itself. Most importantly, advice on how to apply the learnings was also explained, helping the team understand how to work with their prospects, build rapport, and persuade them to make a decision.
Of course, no process comes without challenges. While most were happy to understand more about themselves, some struggled with looking ‘under the bonnet’, and required further assistance to understand, accept and use the results. To help out with these scenarios, Adam set up one-to-one sessions in order to explain the results in individualised detail and provide bespoke guidance.
True blue results
As part of the Insights process, people are assigned colours that epitomise their personalities: Earth Greens, for example, are encouraging and sharing, while Sunshine Yellows are sociable and enthusiastic.
Driven by detail, Cool Blues are an introverted type who prefer to follow a clearly defined process when working. While this can make them meticulous in their approach, it also exposes certain blind spots: if they feel they’ve ticked every box and completed the process, they move on, feeling there’s nothing more they can do, even if the sale’s been lost.
This neglects the human element. People procrastinate, get distracted, lose interest. A wealth of factors can play a part in winning or losing a sale, and the process-focused approach of Cool Blues means they may miss opportunities to turn a deal around.
Mark saw this first hand with a Cool Blue in his team, called John. “One of my team was doing a call back on a customer, a Sunshine Yellow who’s driven by passion and enthusiasm. She was procrastinating and the sale was dragging. Normally, John would have felt like he’d exhausted all his options and accepted the deal was lost.
“Thanks to Adam’s teachings, he took a different approach this time. Armed with his knowledge of personality types, John was able to recognise that she was a Sunshine Yellow and in the call, he dialled up the Yellow side of his own personality. As a result, his language had more passion and enthusiasm, and he became more dynamic in his approach to the customer.
“The pair of them struck up a stronger connection built on their shared enthusiasm, and John was able to convert a significant sale that he’d ordinarily have missed.”
Another tendency of the ‘Blue’ group was to avoid asking for the order. They believed that by covering every aspect of the sales process so thoroughly, they had earned the right for customers to simply say ‘yes’; in their minds they had done enough to enable the customer to make a buying decision. By avoiding a ‘close’ they were giving customers a reason to procrastinate further which most will favour, particularly on high-value buying decisions. By adding uniquely tailored closes into their processes, the ‘Blues’ showed a dramatic improvement in their sales volume and conversions.
Such transformations were seen in most of Mark’s people. By developing the team’s ability to click with customers, Mark and Adam gave them more than relationship-building know-how; they provided them with a common language that helped them understand their different personality types and team role behaviours, their strengths and areas they excel in, and those they struggle with and tend to avoid.
This meant the team could better support one another on a day-to-day basis and deliver superior results for the company.
“Adam’s greatest skill is that he’s a natural motivator,” says Mark. “He motivates from a couple of directions. First, he gives you the grand picture on the horizon, so you can get a top-level view of where you want to get to. But secondly, he also understands you as an individual within the team, so he can get to grips with the people behind the company and what may be truly holding their performance back.
“He’s very bright, knows the tools he practices inside and out, and is able to relate to people on a deep level, so he can get them buoyed up and working to their maximum potential, whatever their personality type.”
Find out how Creating Dynamic helped one company thrive through Traction and get in touch to discover how we can do the same for you.
