'How This Candidate Drove a Stagnant Sales Region to 20% Monthly Growth'

Um, all right. So, uh, when I was working as the corporate accounts manager, uh, in 2019, I was in charge of a Lean 6 Sigma project in which, um, I was, you know, uh, I had to increase the, you know, monthly sales quota of a region by around, um, 20% per month. And uh

Yes, because the, because it was our headquarters, point number one, and our headquarters were not uh very well, uh, I mean it was our strength area from last two years actually the business has been stagnant, like there was just 1% growth, 2% growth like that. And the business is not growing and uh um so the manager felt that there is a huge potential in this area that could be, uh, you know, unveiled and, uh, um, you know, 20% growth per month is possible and

We are speaking about numbers. We are not speaking about revenue here. OK, so, uh, there were two quota. One is the monthly sales quota as the volume quota, basically, and another was the revenue quota. So I'm speaking about the monthly numbers quota.

Numbers of this product that we were selling in the market,

Yeah, units.

yeah, so the point is this region was doing around 100 units a month, approximately 100, so 100 to 120, the, you know, the target was to make 120, um, each month. And uh so you know um and I was assigned with her uh team and I was assigned with the project. Now, uh, to do this activity first time, I mean the I would uh briefly explain what the problem was here. So this was our headquarters. Our headquarters is located and my, uh, that, uh, so the brand was well known in the market. Now even if after that the bra um numbers are not increasing. So my first work was to in, you know, find, uh, understand why the numbers are not increasing in this area, and, uh, what I did, I launched several surveys with different stakeholders in the internal stakeholders, in the external stakeholders. I tried to find out from the customers why, you know, if they are happy with the product, if there is any performance issues. Similarly, I reached out to the channel partners, to the sales reps who were working in that area, and. I found out different, uh, you know, uh, got the feedback. So, uh, based, I analyzed the entire, uh, uh, feedback and I did analysis like I used Pareto analysis. I used fish bone diagram, um, because those were the Lean 6 Sigma Project, uh, tools to, uh, find out the root causes of the issues, and I observed four issues. First issue was that, um, I mean, the. Employees were not confident when they are facing the customers. Uh, second issue was

All right, so, um, employees, when I launched a survey with the employees that, uh, sales reps basically that, um, you know, regarding how confident do you feel when you are facing the customers, I got this feedback that they are not confident when they are facing the customers, and they, they were saying that, uh, the prices of our my product is higher than the market. The other competitors and they were coming up to the price, but they also are saying at the same time that they are not confident regarding the uh uh they're not feeling confident so there were several layers into that and when I, you know, analyzed that problem, I saw that, uh, you know, they have not got, uh, there is no training given to them. To face such situations from last uh one year, there has not been a training calendar, so this was one of the issues which I found out. And uh so uh could I go to the second uh reason yeah so the second reason that uh I found out was um the influencers basically gave this me uh this from the influencer's feedback I got this that, uh, in the last 2 years there has not been any effort to, you know, meet them or there has not been any contact between the sales reps and the, uh, influencers. Influencers are basically the consultants who, you know, give suggestions to different customers. Then third issue I found out that, um, um, the financial tie-ups are not in place. So when I, uh, um, I mean when I analyzed the order loss analysis, I saw that many orders we are losing because of lack of financial tie-ups. And fourth reason,

Financial tie-ups,

So there are different banking corporations. When you, uh, when my product is sold in the market, it is an expensive technical product. So, uh, people, I mean the clients need financial, uh, um, support to buy the product. So there are the financial tie-offs are not in place. So, and this is the, uh, but my competitors are having the financial tie-offs. So, uh, and the fourth reason. Uh, I found out that the service response time for the customer was not, uh, in place. I mean, it was very high. And I addressed these 4 issues. I mean, um, and when I addressed these 4 issues, I did, uh, several influencer meetups, then for the sales guys, different sales trainings, and I first, you know, and, uh, I did a capability gap analysis that what exactly is the problem. And how they can improve, um, so the hard skills, the soft skills, different training programs, then for the, uh, service response time I reached out to the service dealers and, uh, made different, uh, you know, um, activities to bring that down so that their, um, you know, their trust increases. And uh for the financial tie up also I, I reached out to different financial corporations and uh did several SLAs and after that, very surprisingly, the numbers were increased and in 6 months because this project was around 6 months of time I had, so by the end of 6 months I was getting 24% increase in the monthly sales quota, not just 20%. So

Yeah, in 6 months. OK. And, And, and it was, uh, this project was awarded by the, uh, uh, vice president for the best project in Lane 6 Sigma because we were trying to do something in the business area, which is Lane 6 Sigma is very basically focused in the production, not in a business side, commercial side, and it was a very successful project.

All right. So, uh, first was, you know, to make the, I mean, when I was doing this, uh, confidence issue of the, um, sales reps, to make them understand that, you know, price is not the issue. You are not confident that is the issue? And uh to do that I had to, you know, literally give them uh you know, training on sales pitch, how they have to, you know, interact with the customers and uh when different uh hard skill is coming, what is their technical knowledge they do not, I mean, I did a test pre and post um training service and. I analyzed their responses, so they were having very less, uh, you know, technical knowledge regarding the product, so they, the product knowledge was not sufficient, so to make them understand that was a huge challenge. Then, then, uh, this customer uh res uh said that the customer uh service is not up to the mark and uh the response time is very high, and I reached out to the service dealers of that area. The service dealer was not also accepting that, yes, this is my mistake or this is what is happening. So to make them understand, uh, you know, I bifurcated the entire service response time of, uh, of one month customers. I mean, how they are, uh, how much time we are taking from this phase to this phase and this, uh, second phase to 3rd phase, and then if they understood that the service response time is very high because I analyzed that, uh, you know, around 60% of the time to solve a problem is wasted in the service response time. So, this is something they understand and they started addressing that. Similarly, um, regarding the financial tie-ups, um, that is usually a finance work and, uh, since I was involved in this project and I had to get this thing done, I had to understand a lot of, uh, you know, terminologies and, uh, um, different, uh, activities for the, uh, financial work which is to be done. And uh so there was a lot of, of, of back and forth. I was going with the finance team and the, uh, you know, this finance companies I'm um coming across. So, there was a lot of analysis in that. So basically, it was a lot of activity that was happening and uh I would say that kind of stress, it was stressing me out because I had a full-time job at the same time.

Um, The biggest learning for me in this entire, uh, project was, um. To know about how the financial companies work, I felt, because till that time, I was not very much aware about, uh, you know, how these tie-ups are done. And, uh, what it takes to, you know, do the work and, uh, so. I think that was my biggest learning from this activity. And second, I felt that, um, um, you know, the customer satisfaction is something, you know, you should always have, and you should always keep the relevant stakeholders happy, like the influencers because You know, that was an industrial market and customers buy things what the consultants say. So if we are not keeping the consultants happy, we are basically losing the market even if we are having the headquarters, no other competitor was having the headquarters there and uh we have, we, our brand was well known, but so such small, small things can actually diminish your brand. OK.