„Through the gustavkäser training I have learned to behave more decisively and to articulate clear messages. The 4 principles of leadership have been with me ever since. This makes me feel much better personally and makes it a lot easier to deal with my colleagues. I appreciate that every single day!“
Daniela Hug
Operations Manager
Volkshaus Basel
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Copyright © 2021 gustavkäser International. All rights reserved. Impressum | AGB | Datenschutz
gustavkäser International
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The client is a global diversified technology and multi-industrial leader serving a wide range of customers in more than 150 countries. A total of 135,000 employees create intelligent buildings, efficient energy solutions, integrated infrastructure and next-generation transportation systems that work seamlessly together to deliver on the promise of smart cities and communities. 2016 was a year of transformation for the company, and several actions to improve long-term shareholder value were taken. To support ongoing changes and striving toward sustainable growth and profitability, we agreed with the company on two main areas to be developed:
1) Developing sales managers in their managerial role as
2) The sales organisation is active in the ME&A region and its main focus lies in increasing value solution selling
Revision of practical results: some sales engineers were given the opportunity to move to bigger sales scope projects/KAM positions where their added value is higher for the company and clients.
Sales of complex solutions increased considerably, and the company was in better shape to cope with changed market conditions in 2016-17. Some sales engineers gained the opportunity to move to bigger sales scope positions/projects and contribute a higher level of added value.
We supported the reorganisation carried out by sales managers within their own teams to assure individual performance (achieved targets), faster customer response and the fair distribution of responsibility.
The biggest overall impact was undoubtedly achieved by developing sales managers, who had previously often acted as micromanagers. Now, the majority challenge and coach their sales teams to achieve their highest performance, thus assuring growth and the attainment of ambitious business objectives.
Sales managers became more autonomous in their managerial function, which in turn gave them time to focus on strategic issues. They now have a better overview of the bigger business picture, and are able to identify larger project opportunities and network at the right level, since they are less involved in daily business operations.
Our cooperation with the client began in 2014 and is currently being expanded to other areas such as key account management development and elevating sales managers to prepare them for future positions.
The company is one of the leading manufacturers of derived timber products and provides solutions for all kinds of interior and exterior application. It is regarded as a trendsetter that produces exclusive materials for facades, interior design, kitchens and the furniture industry. Currently, the company employs over 1,000 people worldwide.
In 2013 the company commenced a programme of internal reorganisation with a special focus on the optimisation of its sales processes. Structural changes encompassed the Sales, Sales Services and Application Engineering divisions. The main goal and purpose of the cooperation with gustavkäser was to enable employees in the affected divisions to manage increasing demands and successfully deal with new challenges.
The company’s requirements and goals were very specific and well formulated, hence the content – partly also specified in advance – was very clear from the outset. What was yet to be decided was which methodology to apply and how to design the programme in order to suit all subsidiaries and yield comparable and consistent results.
The internal restructuring included new expectations in terms of the desired behaviour of sales staff. Our approach was not just to involve the sales staff in the programme, but also their managers. Three years ago, we started the programme with six groups, in which managers and sales staff were trained in parallel over the course of six months.
In sharing their individual success stories, participants have been showing us over the past three years that the training courses have played a decisive role in their professional and personal development. The company’s stakeholders tell us that they have achieved their goal of implementing the new structure and desired behavioural change.
In addition to delivering several training courses within the above-mentioned programme, we have carried out individual coaching, trained employees from Sales Services and delivered special training sessions, for instance, for a recent product launch.
With more than 110 years of experience in the production of industrial machinery, this company is a leading, globally active supplier of process equipment today. Its expertise focuses on dosage systems and pneumatic conveying systems, as well as complete material flow systems. The company is present at 30 locations around the world and employs some 2,500 staff.
Competition in this market is becoming increasingly fierce, with the same products being offered at lower prices. The strength of the company – the quality of its products – was no longer enough to guarantee long-term relationships and thus maintain its market share. Steering the behaviour of the key account managers away from being exclusively driven by sales helped the company to achieve this goal.
During the preparatory phase, it had to be ensured that all of the key accounts had a clear understanding of and access to the company values, and knew how these concepts were to be incorporated into daily business. The next step involved the revision of the sales process and thus structured staff planning. The final stage focused on identifying new sales channels and customer interaction.
How could we guarantee the results through training?
The gustavkäser training sessions imparted knowledge, but it was the real-life practice in between those dates that really brought about behavioural changes and sustainability, and ultimately generated positive results. Participant feedback showed that the physical tools, such as memory cards and manuals, were highly appreciated as memory aids, and are still used regularly today. The participants also reported that far from being just another training course, several ‘light-bulb moments’ had followed since.
This company is one of the world’s leading manufacturers of high-quality injection moulding machines for plastics processing. Its trademark is its modular product range made up of energy-efficient, electric, hybrid and hydraulic machines and corresponding peripherals. Based in Germany, the company employs 2,700 staff and generates an annual turnover of around 600 million Euros.
Competition in this market is set to become increasingly tough in the future. Looking ahead, the company aims to increase its market share with the help of training. The strength of the company – its solid customer relations – should be expanded further, whilst honing the expertise of sales staff. The goal is for sales staff to sell products and create customer loyalty through a consulting approach.
During the preparatory phase, the sales strategy had to be revised by studying the market segmentation. Once it was clear which companies were to be targeted, new and innovative sales channels were developed that no longer focussed on the product, but rather on people and their requirements.
Which topics were dealt with in the training?
Our training sessions imparted knowledge, but it was the real-life practice in between those dates that really brought about behavioural changes and sustainability, and ultimately generated positive results. Participant feedback showed that the physical tools, such as memory cards and manuals, were highly appreciated as memory aids, and are still used regularly today. The participants also reported that far from being just another training course, several ‘light-bulb moments’ had followed since.
This valued client is a leading supplier of key components to the automotive industry, with major facilities on three continents. It is a dynamic, high-growth company offering differentiated technology plus supply chain innovation.
In light of their success in managing the 35% market share they enjoyed with a global automotive manufacturer, they recently competed for – and were awarded – 100% of the business volume for the critical components they manufacture. This tripling of the production volume required the addition of two complete production shifts, calling for the employment of literally thousands of workers and hundreds of coordinators and managers. This client’s facilities are in a more rural area, where attracting and retaining skilled technical workers is a challenge, let alone experienced leaders for high-tech production facilities.
Many skilled workers were promoted to coordinators, and several front-line supervisors were appointed as shift and line managers. Essentially none of these professionals had ever received any sort of leadership training. The vast majority had no leadership role models and had never envisioned themselves in any sort of leadership role.
And nothing but excellence would be accepted by their customer, the producer of high-volume vehicles for North America.
gustavkäser was chosen as the training partner for several reasons. First, we had already worked on smaller-scale projects with this firm in two countries, so we understood their business. Second, gustavkäser’s trainers were, themselves, engineers with substantial manufacturing experience. Third, a number of high-level managers in the firm had already participated in gustavkäser training courses and were therefore familiar with the programme and knew how it would be delivered, how it had helped them and how practical it was for the real world.
In order to address the needs of new supervisors all the way up to new executives, gustavkäser worked to tailor the training content, programming, goals and methods to the different groups. Furthermore, in delivery, it was crucial to be able to communicate and interact effectively with many different levels of experience and education.
Converting dozens and dozens of newly-minted coordinators into a strong-performing leadership team was an enormous challenge. But it was a fantastic experience. Some 80% of the people embarking on new leadership roles had never imagined themselves doing so.
But they attended every session. They completed the necessary preparation for each class. They participated and shared their views. They even made speeches and practised their roles in the exercises. They gave their full attention and effort to the training, which was in addition to the extremely demanding production goals set for them. They found abilities inside themselves that they never imagined to exist.
Although it was, as always, gratifying and exciting to watch the more experienced coordinators grow into far more professional and capable managers and executives, the greatest reward was witnessing dozens of new supervisors make the choice to challenge themselves, to reach for a level of achievement that had not been pursued by anyone among their family or friends, and to believe that they could teach others and help them to grow. They worked hard, took their new career choice seriously, gave their very best and ultimately succeeded.
Our client is now in their 3rd year of successful partnership with their customer. The expansion has been a success, and they’ve supported record-breaking sales of their customer’s vehicles. Production goals have been met, and overtime has been brought within budget.
Retention is up over 14%. Absenteeism has been reduced by 8% and the overall plant quality index has risen by 7.2%.
The success of this expansion has in fact sparked more new contracts, more expansion, and more investment. The company has more new projects than at any previous time in their history.
The client is one of the major international manufacturers of products and systems for building coatings. Its business focuses first and foremost on external wall insulation systems, a sector in which the company occupies a leading position. Included in the facade systems product group are render and paint systems for external applications.
We were contacted by the manager of North Europe division (including Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania). The company is financially solid and has yielded a profit every year. However, the results still failed to reflect the potential in the market. The new manager of the region was implementing a new strategy and sought a partner who could help to improve the culture for change within the company.
All change and culture starts with management. We held a workshop with the top management team to see how the new strategy should be implemented in the organisation. Based on the results of this session, we decided to run a management training with Insights Discovery. We started with a pilot group in the region’s main country and subsequently rolled out the management training in all of the remaining countries in the region.
The focus of the management training sessions was to create a culture of praise and have the courage to challenge each other. We wanted to make heroes!
The next step was to train the sales team. Within the company, there were two different sales approaches: one team selling projects and the other meeting the customers in company’s shops all over the region. In light of this, we carried out project sales training for the whole region and sales training for all the sales staff working in the shops.
Up until now all sales staff concentrated on the product and its technical features. Like with the management training, the objective of the sales training was to change the focus to make heroes. To see the customer as a human being, listen to them and focus on their needs and how we can meet them
The results were immediately noticeable in many ways. Even during the pilot roll-out in the region’s major country, we already saw a change in culture within the management group, and the rest of the countries followed suit.
This was an important success criteria when the sales and project sales training courses were rolled out.
The financial results also started to improve before we had even rolled out the sales training. This once again proves the effect that culture can have within management groups.
After the roll-out of the sales training, other regional branches of the company have their gaze firmly fixed northwards!
The company grew as an Internet security provider and is ranked as one of the top global anti-malware application vendors today. It has more than 500 million users and is present in more than 100 countries around the world. Technology was the core competency from the very beginning, with a focus on the product quality.
The company hired and trained a large number of highly skilled IT specialists. As recognition of the product quality began to grow, the aim to become a global success was the next natural step. Technical competence was the company’s main asset. Sales, marketing, people management and a multinational workforce became increasingly critical subjects in a market lacking the necessary expertise, educational resources and previous references. The situation became a real challenge.
gustavkäser was chosen as a partner because of its local training experience and expertise in the international IT industry.
gustavkäser was in constant contact with the CEO. The first step involved working with the top management, almost all members of which were IT specialists, to develop people management skills. Team and individual approaches were used.
Under consideration of the challenges to be faced when approaching a global market, the company was reorganised. New departments were created, where technical staff members were stimulated to work together with sales and marketing employees.
gustavkäser began to work with people, product and project managers in long-term projects designed to develop management and leadership skills, communication abilities, and to build a missing and much-needed team spirit among people with very different backgrounds, objectives and job descriptions.
As of today, seven projects have been completed with more than 80 participants. Team and individual approaches were used in all projects; personal personality profiles (Insights Discovery) were generated and discussed. The process is still ongoing.
For several years now, gustavkäser and the company have been involved in close collaboration. One key result of this is that the company has made major advances towards the creation of a new culture, based on generating increased added value in a very diverse and global environment. A culture in which diversity generates complementarities (instead of adversities). As a result, the company has been able to improve the effectiveness of its activity. Today, less than 5% of its revenue comes from the local market.
The company and gustavkäser are planning to continue their cooperation and extend it on an international level.
Every day, billions of people use their technologies and solutions to satisfy their basic needs for food, mobility or communication. All over the world, the company occupies leading market positions in technologies and methods for processing grain into flour and feed, as well as for the production of pasta and chocolate, in die casting, wet grinding and surface coating. The company’s core technologies are in the areas of mechanical and thermal process engineering.
The Group operates in over 140 countries, has a global payroll of 10,640, and generated sales revenues of CHF 2,45 billion in fiscal 2016, as the largest family-owned company in Switzerland.
The company promotes itself as the expert partner when it comes to machines, plants and services for grain and food processing as well as for producing high-quality materials. The client has been operating in Singapore since 1977, and has gained in-depth knowledge of its customers’ specific requirements in the region over the past decades.
The subregion SEA (Southeast Asia) reports to the regional CEO and global board member who is based in China.
Strong local presence
The Singapore office takes care of the individual needs of all customers based in Southeast Asia, and has additional offices located in Melbourne/Australia, Manila/Philippines, Bangkok/Thailand, Ho Chi Minh City/Vietnam, Jakarta/Indonesia, Yangoon/Myanmar, Phnom Penh/Cambodia, and Taipei/Taiwan. The strong local presence allows a fast response to any kind of enquiry and customer service.
For individual solutions
As the market leader, they offer comprehensive solutions and systems to suit specific customer needs. The office in Singapore provides the entire range of products and services of the Group, with a focus on food processing and production technologies. Since customer needs vary greatly across the region, the Singapore office provides individually optimised solutions in order to guarantee maximum customer benefit.
Our external programmes as a springboard: to learn something for herself, but most of all to ‘test our programme’, the regional HR manager joined our external Management & Leadership training course in mid 2013. After the second of five individual training days held over the course of four months, she asked when the next ‘batch’ would start and signed up the next participant, the head of legal and commercial affairs.
Based on their positive experience, these two participants recommended top management to engage in collaboration with gustavkäser for the regional leaders as the country managers and heads of the regional business units. This resulted in a customised programme of three two-day modules (six days in total), which were held in three different countries for two groups of 12 and 9 participants respectively from May through August 2014.
The results of the feedback were overwhelming with an almost unisono response to all the daily feedback of excellent or very good (over 94%) and a final rating for the full programme of ‘excellent’ by two thirds of the participants and a ‘very good’ by all others, measured against the objectives they had set for themselves for this training.
This was accompanied by the strong recommendation of these leaders to expand the gustavkäser programme to the sales teams in the region, with a focus on selling excellence.
This resulted in a customised programme on selling excellence with three groups across the region with 12 participants each. Again, the responses were overwhelmingly positive and a very solid relationship was established with many of the participants.
Finally in 2016, the Leadership training course was held for one group in China, with equally positive feedback.
After this, we rekindled discussions for a new round of training and a fourth group attended the Selling Excellence training, which finished in Dec. 2016.
At the same, we started discussions for an Advanced Negotiations/Strategic Selling training course with an initial group of hand-picked individuals, some with 35+ years of sales experience in the relevant industries and hailing from as far as the US, Argentina, Switzerland and Germany, as well as from regional countries such as Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam and Singapore.
The results were very convincing once again, especially when several multi-million dollar deals were reported as closed during and after this programme by some of these highly driven, skilled and successful individuals, a handful of whom had already asked, ‘What’s next…?!’
The client is the telecommunications provider with the biggest market share, owned by the industry global leader. It employs 700 people, with a sales department focused on two segments: B2C, realised through shops and online sales, and B2B, which consists of Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) and Key Account Management (KAM) sales teams.
The business landscape for telco providers is changing. Core connectivity business is decelerating, and ICT is the area where new development should concentrate. Trends like digitalisation, simplification, the need of access anywhere at any time, and the Internet of Things and Internet of Everything put telecom operators in a unique position given their proximity to the core connectivity business that enables these trends. Entering ICT battleground gives rise to new competition for traditional telcos – IT companies, which are much faster and more flexible in picking the right market approach.
As the performance of telco sales forces is commonly measured by the number of transactions, rather than revenues and churn, their approach to clients is often based on the acquisition of new customers or on overselling standard products to existing customers, rather than on the development of new or complex offerings. Therefore, sales force transformation becomes the most important part of the telcos’ ICT business development strategy: making the sales force capable of selling solutions instead of basic services would be one of the key success differentiators.
Switching from traditional sales to selling solutions requires adjusting the way in which sales staff approach customers and where they concentrate their focus. Existing telco services are simple and very often accepted by users as a commodity, with one or two decision makers. Selling is based on technical characteristics, and price and availability are two most crucial factors in making the final decision . In terms of ICT services, the landscape is changing: products and services are more complex, the sales process includes many meetings and presentations with more decision makers, sellers are perceived as business advisors and return on investment becomes a key factor in the final decision.
To support the sales force transformation process, gustavkaeser Serbia created a two-year development programme with a focus on
The first phase was implemented through two training sessions: a six-day sales effectiveness training for each group (SME and KAM) and another six-day management excellence training for group managers. The courses enabled participants to strengthen their basic communication skills applied to their areas of responsibilities. The second part started with the assessment of the current sales process and decisions on how it should be improved. The trainer participated in the process of developing a sales framework to address the changed market reality – selling new, complex services. After receiving final approval for the framework, two sales champs were chosen to ensure its successful implementation in both segments.
The second phase focused on how to apply the skills and learning from the first phase in the improved sales framework. A total of 12 training days over the period of 10 months were used to work on complex sales skills and the participants’ ability to influence several decision-makers within one company.
For the past two years, gustavkaeser Serbia and the client have collaborated on developing a sales force capable of confronting the new market reality. The client is now in the implementation phase of the sales framework, supported by a good foundation based on the skills developed through the multi-day training programmes. With individual sales staff empowered to drive more complex sales, the client is in a position to be able to address current challenges whilst maintaining its profit margin at the expected level.
