Shell Case Study
Overview
We engaged Shell’s sales team in a transformation programme that led to a powerful change in mindset and positive behaviour. Our intervention helped deliver a five year profit target of €50m per annum in fewer than two years.
Highlights
profitability within the first 12 months
profit per annum delivered in 23 months
increase in call rates
increase in prospect interviews
The Challenge
Turning a newly formed sales team into a high performing unit
Shell’s senior leaders created a new division to serve customers better, aiming to build €50 million net profit in 5 years.
The Sales Manager was tasked with building a sales team to deliver this vision. Upon building his 300 strong sales community, it quickly became apparent that it would be difficult to manage and unite a group with such diverse levels of skills with inconsistent and somewhat outdated sales and sales management processes / approaches.
Shell approached Sewells to work with their team to transform their sales strategy and engage their team’s potential to deliver their ambitious target successfully.
How We Helped
Empowering people to deliver beyond targets
Shell’s senior leaders created a new division to serve customers better, aiming to build €50 million net profit in 5 years.
We know that real change comes from people. Our diagnostics interviews quickly revealed that the most significant barrier to success was the mindset and attitudes of the people involved.
And while €100m had already been invested in IT logistics, manufacturing, and marketing, they needed to invest in their people and engage every employee with clear, tried and tested sales processes and techniques and compelling messages and sales leadership.
Working closely with Shell, we built a new vision based on solid values and embedding behaviours that would result in powerful changes of performance within the business.
We set out to fully understand their business and their people, measure their enthusiasm and engagement and identify the barriers to success. We delivered an inclusive programme to engage and empower their people, uniting them in a shared plan for success and giving them all the confidence to deliver it.
We created shared development programmes focused on improving performance and promoting accountability to exceed their planned targets. And with 300 people working across 29 countries, we made sure our programme resonated across cultures and languages.
The Results
Accelerated success beyond all expectations
Our collaboration with Shell accelerated their new division’s success, empowering their people to become a high-performing team.
The results speak for themselves:
- Shell’s sales team turned zero profitability into €13m profitability within the first 12 months
- Call rates saw a 68% increase – and closing ratios on prospect interviews increased 150%
- The €50m profit objective was broken down into individual targets, driving up ownership and locking in commitment. As a result, they achieved their stretching five-year profit objective in just 23 months
Customer Quote
The programme was tailor made for Shell and met our requirements perfectly.
In one year we doubled sales and tripled them over the next three.
