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The Brooks Group

How to EnterCompany: The Brooks Group, Greensboro, NC
Company Description: The Brooks Group provides sales and sales management assessment, training, and retention services in order to help sales-driven companies measurably improve their effectiveness.
Nomination Category: Solution Provider Awards Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Sales Training Practice of the Year

Nomination Title: The Brooks Group

Tell the story about what this nominated organization has achieved since the beginning of July 2011 (up to 500 words). Focus on specific accomplishments, and relate these accomplishments to past performance or industry norms. Be sure to mention obstacles overcome, innovations or discoveries made, and outcomes:

This year has been a banner year for The Brooks Group, a top-tier sales training firm, for many reasons.

In honor of its 35th anniversary, Brooks hosted a series of no-cost 35 minute informational webinars for sales leaders on topics ranging from “How to Deal with Procurement” to “How to Effectively Deliver Proposals.” Hundreds of participants joined these conversations.

Perhaps even more importantly, Brooks celebrated more global and North America rollouts since July 2011 than in any similar period in the history of the company. This unprecedented growth is a reflection of the effectiveness of Brooks’s flagship IMPACT Selling® System.

A whopping 99.45% of participants in Brooks’s sales training programs indicate they would recommend the workshops to others. Further, 82.5% said it was better than any other sales training workshop they’ve attended. This probably explains why 85% of Brooks’s clients have been with the firm for more than 8 years.

Brooks’s passion for its clients’ needs is easily seen in client reactions. “The thing that I really like about Brooks is that it was all very turnkey. That made me realize the value of the group. You really think outside the box,” said Jane Richardson, head of Training and Development for PACCAR Parts, an international distributor of truck parts.

Another shining example of results comes from an Original Equipment Manufacturer client of Brooks. Four months after the initial training program, a detailed analysis revealed that 60% of the dealer salespeople indicated they sold 1-3 additional units per month (at an average sales price of $50,000) as a result of their training. 24% of the salespeople have increased gross margin per unit sold “significantly.”

With a 21% growth in average sales value (which marks a 40% increase over 2010), Brooks is doing all this profitably.

Sales training industry analysts have also spent much of 2012 commenting about a “new” trend called “gamification,” which is applying game mechanics to non-game environments like training. Brooks has been providing its clients with an innovative, gamified approach to sales coaching and training reinforcement for fifteen years. Their coaches (all highly experienced sales leaders) are tasked with reinforcing the concepts from the classroom training in the field for up to 9 weeks after each training engagement. During the coaching sessions, participants compete with one another and earn credit for successfully deploying skills in the field.

Brooks is constantly releasing new and innovative ways to drive learning into sales departments. Perhaps its most exciting development in recent years has been the “IMPACT Summit Challenge.” In this highly interactive one-day session, principles of gamification are introduced. Teams compete to provide best practice answers to questions relating to sales skills, industry trends, and product knowledge questions, as well as during interactive exercises. Answering correctly enables those teams to advance in the game and earn rewards.

Brooks’s real success comes as a result of the fact that each member of the team takes tremendous pride in their client-facing work, often going above-and-beyond expectations. Clients offer consistent praise of everyone from facilitators to shipping coordinators.

The Brooks Group recognizes that its wins are its clients’ sales successes.

 

Provide a brief (up to 100 words) biography about the leader of this nominated company:

Marty Scirratt was selected as President & CEO of The Brooks Group in May of 2012. The former Senior Vice President of Sales at a publicly traded firm, Marty led a team of 500 people responsible for more than $1.7 billion in sales. In September, Marty announced a strategic plan to grow The Brooks Group by 20% each year for the next ten years.