Success Stories

We support multiple clients in execution and coaching across teams and borders, helping them to align sales and the new way of working across the whole organization - explore some of our success stories here.

ACTOM & Mercuri International - Partnership in place since 1998.

ACTOM (Pty) Ltd is a level 1 B-BBEE Contributor with 52.21% Black Ownership and 31.27% Black Women Ownership. It is the largest manufacturer, solution provider, repairer, maintainer and distributor of electro-mechanical equipment in Africa, offering a winning and balanced combination of manufacturing, service, repairs, maintenance, projects and distribution through its 35 outlets throughout Sub-Saharan Africa.

ACTOM is also a major local supplier of electrical equipment, services and balance of plant to the renewable energy projects.

It also hold numerous technology, distribution and value-added reseller agreements with various partners, both locally and internationally.

THE CHALLENGE:

Management development:

Management was identified as an area where the businesses could extract the most value from development. Working on creating an awareness of the critical success criteria for managers and helping them develop an understanding of how these are applied in their work spaces across the board.

Unified culture:

As a large organisation with various seperate entities, there was difficulty in instilling a unified culture that would display the type of behaviours and impressions the company wanted to portray internally and to customers.

OUR SOLUTION:

Define the critical success criteria the business wanted displayed by its managers. Design an intensive one week development centre that would awaken participants to the critical success criteria and equip them to apply these in their own work spaces. Participants are then assessed and through feedback encouraged to develop.

Multiple development cetres are run every year where managers are enrolled. Feedback from assessors in the development centres is used to focus development plans and in some cases used to guide succession planning and promotions in the organisation.

THE RESULT:

Managers and teams across the group better aligned with company values.

Improved performance from teams.

Instilment of a unified culture across the group based on the critical success criteria.

80 Approximate development centres since inception in 1998.

98% of group company MD's who attended a development centre before their promotion since the year 2000.

AVBOB & Mercuri International - partnership in place since 2017

AVBOB is one of the largest funeral and financial services organisations in South Africa. As a mutual society its profits are shared with its customers in the form of policy incentives, savings and rewards.

AVBOB have a wide reach that consists of a head office in Pretoria and an extensive national infrastructure of more than 188 funeral agencies, 132 insurance offices and a manufacturing plant.
AVBOB have a highly complex sales structure that includes many middle to senior managers across 4 sales management levels looking after thousands of representatives across the country who are responsible for bringing in new customers.

THE CHALLENGE

Sales productivity:
Many sales teams were struggling with unproductive reps and a high staff turnover. This resulted in large wage bills without the sales results to justify them. Also, the managers were struggling to prioritize their time on the strategically important elements of steering their teams and became hampered by administrative tasks and operational duties.

Role of managers:
Managers were often kept busy with administrative functions and the difficulties of managing large, regularly changing teams. This meant that the well laid out plans to grow the business and improve its competitiveness in the
market never fully realised their considerable potential.

OUR SOLUTION

Increase productivity and strategy implementation by improving the effectiveness and accountability of the management structures to instil a culture of growth and development through institutionalised coaching practices and skills training.

A fully tailored coaching framework with the use of the Mercuri Coaching App were introduced. In addition a full sales competency framework and process were defined and documented and a curriculum developed and delivered for the entire sales team of 4000+ people. This process began in 2017 and is still on-going.

+20000
Number of coaching sessions completed
since April 2020

Honeywell & Mercuri International

Transforming learning and development at Honeywell Building Solutions (HBS) from a purely face to face, traditional, training medium to a more blended approach; encompassing e-learning, virtual instructor-led training and Clever Nelly.

THE CHALLENGE:

With a remit to develop the capability of the Pan European sales Team, whilst optimising costs and travel expenditure, HBS Sales Training & Development required an innovative training solution to match their innovative, energy efficient technologies.

The Honeywell sales-force required a consistent sales training solution that could be interpreted across the diverse pan European team and themed around their key business drivers:

Customer First
Driving Growth

OUR SOLUTION - A BLENDED SALES DEVELOPMENT SOLUTION:

Mercuri worked with Honeywell Building Solutions to develop a bespoke solution which focused on these business drivers. The first phase was to design and roll out a series of e-learning and virtual modules focused on the key tools and skills required by the sales force, namely: activity planning, customer delivery, value communication, negotiating and closing.

The next phase was to convert the existing 3-day core sales process programme into a blended solution, replacing classroom theory with virtual training, leaving a shorter face to face workshop focused on practical application and practice. Both programmes incorporated detailed and structured follow up to secure changed behaviours and RoI.

The e-learning pre work modules are designed to introduce sales theory and concepts to the participants before they "attend" the virtual sessions. The Virtual Training sessions are a maximum of 4 hours duration and can be joined from the comfort of home or local office.

Included within these flexible virtual sessions are video rooms for role playing which enable the participants to practice using realistic scenarios.

Working on a global basis often means traditional selling is undertaken virtually, either by Skype or video conference. These virtual training solutions support this new way of selling.

To aid learning and recall after the virtual sessions, Honeywell worked with Mercuri and their partner Elephants Don't Forget, using their 'Clever Nelly' tool to ask delegates regular questions linked to the programme key learns. Clever Nelly is Artificially Intelligent and uses a range of sophisticated, tailored, multiple-choice questions delivered via email or a smartphone app. On average, Nelly delivers 3 to 4 questions per participant per day, which require less than 2 minutes in total response time.

THE RESULT:

As well as achieving an average 90% + satisfaction score with 94% happy to recommend the programmes to colleagues, the Honeywell team has also seen a number of business benefits arising from the holistic learning approach:

Reducing travel costs and accommodation.

Minimising of business downtime (Max 240 minute sessions).

Convenience - participation at home or in own office location.

Huawei & Mercuri International

Chinese Multinational Company in IT-Industry; Global Market Leader in Telecommunication Equipment Manufacturing.

THE CHALLENGE:

Client situation: Strong growth in revenues but slow growth in profits:
Internal analysis had shown that contract quality with Global Key Accounts had dropped over the years; average size of contract value is above 250 Mio US$.

Mercuri was invited to support an initiative for enhancing contract quality regarding selected Key Performance Indicators such as Margin, Payment Terms, Liability and others.

OUR SOLUTION:

Benchmark existing client's negotiation process with world-class industry standard.

Analyze and document client's negotiation process "as-is" and "should-be".

Develop working methodologies, tools, guidelines and competence profiles to improve process-quality and results:
Measure current competence profile of client's Top-100 lead-negotiators globally and identify competence gaps on individual level.

Develop and run training courses to close competence gaps in selected areas with room for improvement:

Trainings were designed as a business simulation of "competitive negotiation":
Participants had to undergo an intense 5-days realistically simulated and complex negotiation process. Within this scenario-based learning experience, all teams had to prepare, execute and follow-up a number of critical activities including communicating with internal and external negotiation partners to achieve the best possible contract quality.

Each participant was constantly assessed during all 5 days to identify their remaining improvement-potential as a basis for further individual coaching and other competence-building measures.

HIGHLIGHTS:

During the analysis of the negotiation process it turned out that the key-issue for deteriorating contract-quality was NOT predominantly caused by negotiations with EXTERNAL partners but by INTERNAL negotiations with team members from various departments. Once the partly conflicting internal interests were early anticipated and aligned, it was much easier to successfully achieve acceptance for own interests from clients.

The audience of Top-100 lead-negotiators are very experienced Business Executives, who "have seen it all". Still it was perceived as a real "eye-opener", that it is almost impossible to achieve excellent results in "final negotiations" as long as the long-lasting sales process (12-24 months) prior to the final negotiations is not regarded as an internal and external negotiation process where all different contractual elements must be carefully aligned and communicated.

It was recognized as an illusion that you can "heal" major shortcomings in the sales process in just a few final negotiations; both sales and negotiation process have to be strictly linked and must be regarded as one entire combined process of achieving high contract quality.

THE RESULT:

Targeted Key Performance Indicators of contract quality have improved by over 5% in average within 12 months period.

Re-defined negotiation process as combination of sales and negotiation activities.

Clear definition of team-approach for top-negotiations with team members from all involved departments.

Clarification of roles & responsibilities of all team members: re-organize reporting-lines/communication lines and synchronize with different stages of newly defined process.

Velux & Mercuri International

For more than 75 years the VELUX Group has created better living environments by bringing daylight and fresh air into people's homes all over the world. It is the leading producer of roof windows and commercial skylights, making it one of the strongest brands in the building industry.

The VELUX Group has manufacturing and sales operations in more than 40 countries, with an extensive distribution network.

THE CHALLENGE:

At the beginning of the C19 crisis, VELUX were in a situation where most of the sales force around Europe was grounded and working from home. Meanwhile most customers could continue some degree of normal work, however with a different degree of national restrictions. As a result, the salespeople were faced with a new reality and a new set of challenges that they quickly had to adapt to.

With the help of Mercuri, 3 major challenges were identified:

Improve the ability to do remote selling and adapt best practices.

Identify new best practice within remote sales management.

Ensure field staff motivation and keep a strong focus on people management during the crisis.

OUR SOLUTION:

With the help of Mercuri, the aim was to create an online interactive learning platform for our sales force and our sales management. Our primary goal was to keep our field staff motivated while maximising our sales performance during the C19 crisis. Our secondary goal was to prepare for the post-crisis period and develop new ways of working for the future.

In record time, Mercuri helped scope and deliver a 100% virtual training program for our sales forces, which was built on two main elements:

A newly launched standard Mercuri e-learning program for Virtual Selling, that we offered to our field sales force and sales managers.

A series of three webinars for Sales Management, to share best practice and discuss the implementation of new ways of working now and in the future. The webinars were designed as highly interactive with practical exercises and implementation as homework between each webinar. Mercuri was very helpful in recommending a relevant guest speaker from Neurolead for two webinars, who ensured a strong focus on people management, while Mercuri managed the sales management perspective.

Within a few weeks the e-learning program to our sales force was ready, and within one month, three webinars were executed for the entire sales management team in Central and Eastern Europe. The webinars were mainly focusing on real-life examples and practical application. The feedback from the participants has been excellent, both regarding the e-learning module and webinar series.

THE RESULT:

Immediate effects: better sales meetings, motivational boost and appreciation from the sales teams.

Long term benefits: broader perspective on how to do business virtually and solutions for improving efficiency and cost of sales after the crisis.

The webinars have helped introduce a mindset change in the regional management team, which will form an essential link to the long-term digital strategy and our sales planning in the post crisis environment.