SAP - Sales Training or Coaching Program of the Year

Company: SAP, Newtown Square, PA
Company Description: As the market leader in end-to-end enterprise application software and intelligent technologies, SAP is at the center of today’s business and technology revolution. Our innovations enable more than 437,000 customers around the world operate profitably, adapt continuously and achieve their purpose.
Nomination Category: Sales Awards Achievement Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Sales Training or Coaching Program of the Year - Technology Industries

Nomination Title: SAP Academy for Sales Leaders

Which will you submit for your nomination in this category, a video of up to five (5) minutes in length, explaining the nominated achievement since July 1, 2018, OR a written essay of up to 650 words describing the same? (Choose one): An essay/case study of up to 650 words

Challenge:

In a world of exponential technical evolution, people are confused. The world of volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity (also known as the “VUCA-world”) creates challenges not only in private life, but also in business, especially in sales. Decisions are being made faster, based on information most decision-makers didn’t have just a few years ago. This impacts the way our sales force needs to interact with customers to create a unique personal experience.

What does this mean for our Sales Leaders? In order to stay ahead of the growing global competition, sales leaders are challenged to support and develop their sales teams so that they are not only equipped to be successful, but that they are also engaged in a differentiated, personalized and “human” way with their customers.

As the leading enterprise software company in the world, SAP’s customers expect our sales teams to be exceptionally knowledgeable and innovative when engaging with them as trusted advisors.

Our internal training needs analysis identified four main areas of behavioral change that we addressed with our program for Sales Leaders to create mastery:
-Translating the corporate strategy, mission and goals into tangible outcomes for their teams and manage their teams’ expectations
-Managing the pressure of the volatile competitive market and demanding customers
-Changing their (sales leaders) own behavior from transactional management towards transformational leadership
-Building Leadership Trust

Solution:

Our performance consulting efforts led to the creation of The Academy for Sales Leaders program—a program which includes pre- and post-work of a global 4.5-day, on-site workshop. Its foundation is a technical platform for collaboration, best-practice exchange and real-time coaching.

The aim of the program design and execution is to:

-lead sales managers to shift their mindset into a GROWTH-mindset
-change their behavior long term to become even more proficient sales coaches
-help their teams drive more strategic and innovative opportunities

Our program:

So far, over 1,200 sales managers from over 95 SAP subsidiaries worldwide attended the program.

They experienced:
-A clear and universal enablement approach (as opposed to one-off, local trainings that may deviate from a single theme)
-A focus on learning, absent from their typical work distractions
-Synergies through leveraging resources and expertise in the workshop
-Unique and numerous opportunities to network and share best practices globally.

Results:

To measure the program’s impact, we compared the performance of quota carrier reporting to sales managers who have completed the workshop versus quota carriers reporting to non-participant sales managers.

The difference in performance between the two groups was astounding. Those reporting to Academy for Sales Leader participant managers showed significant improvement across each of our 4 KPIs:

Win Rate: # of deals won per quota carrier:
+ 38% improvement
+ 1.2 deals per quota carrier

Avg. Deal Close Value: Average value of closed revenue generated per quota carrier (EURO):
+ 23% improvement
+ 242 K Euro per quota carrier

Pipeline Opportunities: Average # of pipeline opportunities created per quota carrier:
+ 57% improvement
+ 5.7 opportunities per quota carrier

Pipeline Value: Average increase of pipeline opportunities created per quota carrier:
+ 54% improvement
+ 1.7 Mil Euro per quota carrier

Besides these business impact numbers, the SAP Employee Net Promoter Score of Account Executives in the program participants’ teams went up by more than 13 percent. Furthermore, the retention rate in the related sales teams increased by more than 9 percent.

Outlook:

Based on these qualitative and quantitative results, our Board of Sales Learning has decided to further expand the program and to enhance it in three areas:

-Include the latest findings in leadership research (e.g. Leadership in the Digital Future)
-Enhance the content by leveraging external thought leaders (e.g. Trustworthy Leadership)

-Multiply the effect of training by establishing the Leadership Network across the whole SAP organization beyond sales