CASE STUDY
Pioneering Progress: How One Manufacturer Leveled Up Their Sales Game
Industrial Manufacturing
COMPANY OVERVIEW
Q2 Management is a mid-size North American provider of quality assurance and outsourcing staffing solutions, including sorting and inspection services, to parts and components manufacturers in the automotive and manufacturing industries. It is headquartered in Newmarket, Ontario, and has offices in Ontario, Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Florida and New York.
Who we worked with: Business Leaders Looking for Growth
Fractional Sales Leadership
Revenue Enablement Services
Ignite program
Leadership Coaching
Sales Playbook
Q2 Management growth impacts
NORTH AMERICA
EXPANSION
SALES PRODUCTIVITY
INCREASE
SALES PIPELINE
GROWTH
COMPANY GOALS
Q2 Management’s revenue growth had stalled. To address this challenge, the company decided to increase market penetration in the United States and knew it lacked the sales expertise and resources internally to execute its vision. Their initial request was to provide leadership coaching support for their sales leaders to guide them along their growth journey. Â
CHALLENGES & OBSERVATIONS
As we began our detailed revenue diagnostic and process audit, we uncovered that even though Q2 Management had been very successful for over 20 years, they didn’t fully understand the challenges that led to their revenue growth stagnation. We discovered several key issues and were engaged to help them move forward and unlock sales. These challenges included:
- Sales coverage was traditionally limited to Ontario, Ohio, and South Carolina.
- Significant difficulty finding, hiring, and onboarding new salespeople (6 months to ramp).
- Underdeveloped and underutilized sales processes. They relied on tribal knowledge among team members.Â
- Their CRM (Sugar CRM) had very poor implementation, adoption, and utilization rates.
- Sales activities were not measured or transparent.
- Sales accountability did not exist.
- Sales results were unpredictable.Â
- They were not top of mind with existing customers for contingent services such as quality assurance . and inspections.
North America Expansion - 3 New Regions; 50% Increase in Onboarding Effectiveness
Over a period of 12 months, Q2 Management successfully identified three new regional offices in Tennessee, Alabama, and Michigan. As a result of the new onboarding process, Q2 Management could efficiently source, hire, and onboard sales talent for each region, reducing the onboarding process from six months to three months. As a result, the time to active selling was decreased by 50%.Â
TeamRevenue provided us with a repeatable process for scaling our sales organization. From recruiting to onboarding, we now have a process to follow to ensure our path to successful hires and have reduced our time to active selling time by 50%.
Andrew Thompson, Director of Sales
Sales Productivitiy Increase (811% increase in year 1 & 134% in year 2)
To address the productivity challenges, we built a custom Sales Playbook of modern standard operating procedures and implemented a new CRM (HubSpot) to achieve the following results.
Streamlined Sales Process
We built a custom Sales Playbook of modern standard operating procedures and implemented a new CRM (HubSpot) to achieve the following results.
Outbound Sales Sequences
We built a custom Sales Playbook of modern standard operating procedures and implemented a new CRM (HubSpot) to achieve the following results.
Automated Sales Tasks
Automated repetitive tasks such as email follow-ups, data entry governance, and meeting scheduling helped free time for salespeople to focus on selling.
Improved Reporting:
Built robust reporting that provided insights into leading and lagging sales indicators, enabling better decision-making and coaching opportunities for sales leaders.
After implementing the new sales processes, sales activities and productivity increased significantly. All sales enablement programs implemented and managed by TeamRevenue led to dramatic changes in sales accountability, leading to an increase of 811% in sales activities in the first year and 134% in the second year.Â
TeamRevenue provided us with the visibility and process needed to help keep our sales team doing the right things at the right time. As a sales manager, I can now manage the team based on what they are doing and not just what they tell me.
Sean Correa, Sales Manager of Q2 Management
Sales Pipeline Growth (149% 1st year & 97% 2nd year)
By implementing an effective enablement strategy for a new outbound sales motion, a revised sales pipeline process with a built-in governance framework to provide insights into bottlenecks, opportunities, and forecastability of sales outcomes, Q2 Management was able to grow their sales pipeline by 149% in year one relative to a non-covid performing year and 97% the year after.
THE APPROACH AND SOLUTIONS
- Company identity internally and externally (Mission, Vision, Values, Brand Promise)
- Company goals, objectives, and future vision
- Department systems performance and KPIs
- The effectiveness of their go-to-market strategies and business impact
- Technology stack
Upon completing our detailed 6-week revenue growth analysis, we proposed and discussed the various gaps in process, people, and technology that needed to be improved to reach the company’s goals. After a series of meetings, discussions, and debates, we co-designed a revenue growth plan we could execute and activate.
Sales Process Development and a Governance Framework
We created a customer-centric Sales Playbook with new or improved sales processes that introduced a governance framework for improved sales activity and accountability. The Sales Playbook included all standard operating procedures for a healthy sales organization, including topics such as:
- Company overview
- Service overview
- Ideal Customer Profiles (ICP)
- Buyer Personas
- Forecast & reporting
- Sales process
- Pipeline management
- Customer presentations
- LinkedIn sales training
- Sales plays (scripts, talking points, FAQs)
- Email templates
- Territory planning
- Prospecting
- Competitive intelligence
- Sales meeting cadence framework
- CRM best practices
Sales Productivity & Effectiveness
We advocated for and implemented HubSpot Sales and Service Hub to replace Sugar CRM. Most of the sales productivity issues stemmed from poor implementation and adoption of their Sugar CRM. The objective of the CRM change was to implement a more user-friendly and easy-to-adopt CRM to support future sales onboarding and CRM adoption. The Sales and Service Hub implementation was designed to capture processes for prospecting and client servicing.
Recruiting
Q2 Management had no defined sales recruiting process and relied solely on the Director of Sales to source, interview, and hire new salespeople. This approach was neither scalable nor effective for a busy sales executive to implement. To resolve this problem, a dedicated internal recruiting resource was added, a detailed recruitment process was built, and a transfer of the recruitment process was facilitated, monitored, and supported by TeamRevenue. The recruiting process included the following 10 Steps:
- Step 1: The request for talent
- Step 2: The fob description
- Step 3: Advertise & source candidates
- Step 4: Perform pre-screening
- Step 5: The first interview
- Step 6: Additional interviews
- Step 7: Work for It (sales assignment)
- Step 8: Objectively evaluate the candidate pool
- Step 9: References & background check
- Step 10: The offer letter
Sales Onboarding
A 90-day onboarding program was developed to help attract and retain new salespeople and provide them with a shortened path to sales success. The onboarding program included a daily checklist of activities to execute for the first 90 days. The onboarding topics included:
- HR forms and payroll setup
- Delivery of the sales presentation
- Operations training
- Consistent business development
- Review all provided Q2 reference materials
- Proficiency with HubSpot
- HubSpot CRM training
- Understanding Q2 management’s pricing
- LinkedIn/social selling training
- Q2 Management sales process
- Understanding services and value proposition
- Ideal Customer Profile
- Effective use of the internal sales
- Buyer personas
- Sales presentation practice
- Common sales objections- Pricing
- LinkedIn/social selling training – daily routine
- Common sales objections- Relationships
- Account mapping
- Common sales objections- Status Quo Bias
- Understanding the Q2 Sales process
- Common sales objections- Timing
- New business development and building pipeline
- Sales FAQ’s
- The Model Day for Sales Success
Sales Strategy & Expansion
We co-designed a systematic objective-based approach to sales expansion and supported the execution of their expansion plan. TeamRevenue:
a. Objectively researched and recommended the top 3 regional offices to open in the U.S.
b. Supported the sourcing, interviewing, and onboarding of new sales hires for each region.
c. Monitored the performance of each new region and reported on progress.
Sales Enablement
Through training sessions, role-playing, tools and templates, mentoring, sales activity monitoring, and coaching on what a successful day looks like, the Sales Enablement Phase helped the sales team learn the refined strategies in the Sales Playbook.
