The Case Study:
The Challenge
We were approached by our client, a leading semiconductor manufacturer, to drive higher-level customer engagements into larger, more valuable product development initiatives. The challenge was to engage an entire 650 person sales and marketing team in this new initiative at their annual sales conference. Unfortunately, the previous vendor that was hired by our client fell through for them right before the sales conference. We had less than 6 weeks to pull together all of the content for this 3-day global sales conference for the entire 650 person team.
The Solution
At JBK, we developed and implemented a series of programs designed to align the sales and marketing organizations into a more value-based, solutions oriented go-to-market strategy. The core focus of the initiative was the Opportunity and Account Management skills and processes needed to compete more effectively in the larger, more complex sales campaigns that the company was focused on winning.
Over the course of the engagement, our team focused on 3 areas – Overall Program Design, Marketing Messaging Alignment, and Active Learning Design.
The program was designed around a realistic case study, built to replicate the complexity of the new selling environment. Throughout the course of the 3 days, the participants worked in small groups of 8 to 9 to a table, studied a piece of the case, and developed a consensus decision as to their recommended next steps and course of action. At several points during the conference, the case was supplemented with or modified by new competitive information – replicating the complexity of real life.
The case study work was designed as a team competition. Teams were awarded points based on the degree to which their next steps matched those recommended by a team of company experts.
We also designed the program to maintain a high level of consistency of message – whether the message was product, competition, or strategic in nature. Our team partnered up with each “main stage” presenter, from the CEO on down, and worked with them on the construction of their content.
The Results
In the first year, estimated return on investment for the whole initiative, computed by the company, is in excess of 1000%. As measured by the satisfaction metric used by the company, this sales conference is considered to be the most successful one in the history of the company.