It became clear that much of sales growth had been generated reactively due to market growth and was not a result of a sharp sales strategy and strong sales team performance. The management team understood the root cause of the problem and decided to initiate a commercial improvement program.

OPX Partners started with a hands-on diagnostic of the current performance gaps. This was done through a roadshow visiting all regional sales offices for interviews with both managers and sales representatives in each region. A quantitative analysis was also conducted to serve as a complementing fact base. Several improvement areas were quickly identified:

• The current sales process was very complex with many different sales representatives responsible for different parts of the sales process, making ownership and interfaces unclear

• The lead generation process was not systematic and lacked clearly defined owners

• The sales funnel was not sufficiently transparent and lacked clearly defined targets and follow-ups

• Performance management was very light and nondirective, a result of the fast-growing market and linked to the general lack of systematic, proactive sales efforts

• There was in general very limited proactive sales focus due to limited sales urgency

To address the above areas, OPX Partners first developed a simple and clear sales process together with the client, with clearly defined owners, accountabilities and interfaces to ensure it was clear which sales representative owned which part of the process. A performance management model was then developed and introduced, with a systematic meeting structure from top management to sales representative with clearly defined agenda points, performance metrics and performance evaluation material. Finally, the lead generation approach and sales funnel were redesigned to highlight performance gaps and respective owners. The adjusted commercial setup was rolled out through training sessions with all sales representatives during global sales meetings.