Client Profile
As Europe's largest IT supplier, Bechtle is the go-to partner for future-driven IT architectures.
Bechtle delivers a full spectrum of IT services. From business strategy to managed services and sales, across 14 countries in 80 locations. Bechtle’s vision is to be an independent partner to their customers, offering technology to drive business success.
The challenge
Sales is a critical function in every company. CLS has been working with Bechtle since 2016, to support their sales and service teams in Europe. Our sales training is always focused on the needs of the specific team. This time, the sales manager wanted to try out a new approach: one-to-one sales coaching in combination with the training.
Bechtle delivers highly technical IT services across Europe. The sales teams need to be great at making the technical side of their work easy for their clients. In a highly competitive, fast moving market, sales skills need to be kept up to date and focused on the clients’ needs. Bechtle provides their employees with many growth and development opportunities, no matter their career or skill level. Of course, sales training is also one part of the overall people development strategy.
In Czech Republic, Rolf Pekar asked CLS’s specialist sales trainer to come in and work with the sales team. Sales team manager Rolf said: “Due to pretty heterogenous knowledge of systems and level of soft skills between the sales team members, an individual approach seemed to be the right solution. Every colleague has different questions and challenges in their daily work. In my opinion, it is always much more tangible and useful to work on real life situations, compared to listening to a presentation.”
The solution
The training was designed to give immediate, practical results.
- Half day training workshop
- Individual 1 to 1 coaching on live sales calls
- Individual feedback with specific suggestions
- Follow up half day workshop focused on specific sales situations
Listening to the words used and the way questions are asked and answered, means that we have very specific details to work with. How do clients answer this type of question? What kind of response do salespersons get when they change the wording a little? Every salesperson needs to respond to the person they are talking to. This is a client focused approach. You cannot give someone a script and tell them to stick to it. That’s not how technical sales works at Bechtle. Each person needs to pay attention to the client’s needs and make the right kind of response.”
Radek coached each salesperson, suggesting specific changes to the way they speak with clients and the way they think about their sales calls. “Changing the way you think about your clients and how you want to talk with them, changes your language and your attitude. It has a very positive impact on your approach as a salesperson.”
The second workshop covered situations important to every salesperson. These sessions were delivered face to face, but could just as easily have been delivered online, if needed. “It’s great to do face to face training when you can” said Radek.
The training itself is dynamic and highly practical, encouraging people to discuss the real situations they have in their sales calls and talk about the changes they can make.
Questioning techniques, the use of language, which specific words to use, how to listen and move the conversation on, are some of the areas covered in training.
Sales people are highly skilled at what they do. You don’t stay in sales long if you can’t sell. When you are dealing with people who know what to do, most of the time you need a very tailored, practical approach helping them improve.
Radek’s approach is practical and the team was keen to put the learnings into practice right away.
Outcomes
Once the training was complete, Radek went in again to do some follow up coaching. “It was great to hear people putting their learning into practice. And they were getting better results, too.”
The sales team is steadily improving their sales rates and building stronger relationships with their clients. The quality of sales relationships is as important to Bechtle as the number of sales. Individuals are now able to clearly tell their manager what they need to do to improve, how changing their approach just a little, has an impact on the client. They are thinking carefully about the way they do their work and how to do it better every day.
Specialist International People Development Natascha Pala-Kuzmic, who is responsible for this training, says:
“Our sales teams are the first point of contact for many customers. They are responsible for representing Bechtle and building good quality relationships. Having the right people in sales is important. Making sure they learn how to talk and sell in the right way is critical. We trust CLS to help our sales team across Europe do the right thing for every customer. Our sales teams are core to our reputation and business success.”
