International Paper

68 People

$22 Billion

Steve Sullivan has spent the last 22 years in sales and management, the last 
four developing sales training for and delivering it to International Papers 
sales force. Sullivan?fs title, customer value service manager (CVM), was 
developed by International Paper to describe the type of approach its 
salespeople are moving toward a more supportive and consultative role rather 
than a traditional transactional, price-driven approach to sales. Sullivan co-
wrote International Papers CVM playbook, which is the companys main sales 
training guide used by sales, support and customer service professionals. 
Sullivan graduated with a bachelors degree in economics from Ursinus College 
in Collegeville, Pennsylvania.

In 2000 and 2001, International Paper received awards of excellence in sales 
and marketing from Champion International (later purchased by International 
Paper).

In 2002, 2003 and 2004, IP’s customer account team won the RR Donnelley 
Supplier Excellence Gold Award for their work with Six Sigma initiatives. In 
2005 and 2007, the sales team leader (Sullivan) also received the International 
Paper’s Chairman Award for an excellent job in developing, training and 
executing CVM with these tools across the paper sector. 

International Paper has achieved exceptional sales results by using its CVM 
process and increasing business acumen for all sales, support and customer 
service employees. This is where International Papers consultative approach 
to sales is critical. IP implemented the principles of CVM and continues to 
make great efforts to improve customer success by demonstrating how the 
companys tailored solutions deliver value to its stakeholders and customers. 
The five elements of CVM are identify, discover, create solutions, deliver and 
manage.

International Paper sought a way for its sales professionals to better 
understand its customers businesses by having them speak the language of 
their clients and understand how each salesperson can impact customer success. 
A familiarity with business finance was gained by using Paradigm Learnings 
award-winning board game Zodiak®: The Game of Business Finance and Strategy for 
Sales Professionals.

By playing Zodiak, International Paper’s sales professionals gained a better 
understanding of their customers’ businesses by building business models of 
customer operations, analyzing financial and strategic planning information, 
and identifying how to sell bottom-line results to top-line managers. More than 
300 people (sales and support) have participated in Zodiak, experiencing the 
rush of business ownership and realizing the importance of critical business 
fundamentals, such as making a profit, generating cash and increasing 
shareholder value. That’s how profitable solutions are created and delivered. 

The company, which benchmarks its success against 11 other companies in the 
industry, ranked ninth (in return on investment ROI) out of those 11 companies 
in 2003; it ranked sixth in 2004, fourth in 2005 and second in 2006. 

1) Targeting the right customers and using the CVM principles. This allowed the 
salespeople to sell more and to improve their margins and their service 
platforms. 

2) Gaining a broader and deeper knowledge of the customer base. Salespeople 
secured more yeses from customers than they had in past years. They 
transitioned from transactional to consultative in their sales approach.  

3) Sharpening sales skills. As a result of sales training and improved business 
acumen, the account teams had more structure and better guidelines.  

1) Its important to invest the right amount of time, effort and resources 
with targeted customers to make them more successful, and International Papers 
sales professionals learned how to make that investment.  

2) International Paper?fs sales professionals learned to ask questions about 
how to help customers grow, how to help them grow profitably and how to enhance 
their service platforms.  

3) The company took costing complexity out of the sales cycle relationship and 
improved its partnership margins with suppliers. This allowed customers to sell 
more products.