You are here:   About  »  News  »  Sales Academy Wins Award

Sales Academy Developed by O2 and Imparta Wins Award

The Sales Academy devised and implemented by Imparta and its client O2 took the prize for “Best Commercial Training Initiative” for over 1,000 employees in the 2008 Training Journal awards. Judging was based on the Learning & Development team’s ability to design, deliver and evaluate training to meet company business objectives. This was amply proven by the O2 Sales Academy, established in 2003 by O2’s Sales Directorate and its then newly-appointed training partner, Imparta.

Delivering Business impact

Since being founded 10 years ago, Imparta has won numerous awards for its innovative methods and programmes designed to build capability in ways and areas that impact business performance. The O2 Sales Academy, built collaboratively with O2’s internal team, is recognised internally and externally as a ‘strategic differentiator’ for the company. It has delivered tangible business results which include:

• Being regularly ranked by O2 Salespeople as one of two top differentiators in maximising their success.
• Over £65m of revenue directly attributed (via a validation process by O2 management) to use of Creating Client Value, the Academy’s underlying sales methodology.

From 2004 to 2008:

• O2’s corporate customer satisfaction has risen, moving O2 from third in the market to first
• Average overall competency across the entire salesperson population has improved by 40%
• Average coaching competency across the sales management population has risen 62%
• Competence in the Creating Client Value sales methodology directly correlates to performance against target
• The top 20 sales people based on competence scores achieve on average 129% of their sales target
• The bottom 20 based on competence scores achieve on average 57% of their target
• Fast ramp up of sales recruits - the average O2 salesperson reaches a required level of CCV knowledge within 23 days of their first exposure to CCV
• Staff satisfaction – Employee surveys within O2’s Sales Directorate score their satisfaction with training and development higher than the O2 UK average

Moving from ‘challenge’ to ‘capability’

In 2003, the O2 Sales Directorate faced increasing competition and realized the relationship between the customer and the O2 salesperson – not the company’s products or services – would become the key differentiator in the maturing marketplace. Experienced buyers, more complex solutions and price-driven thinking placed new demands on salespeople, and demands on the business to stem unwanted attrition and motivate key staff. The Sales Director realized that O2 needed to create a fundamental shift from transactional to consultative selling, gain commitment from salespeople to make the changes required of them, and show that investment in sales training was providing measurable returns.

After extensive research on sales best-practice and companies working in sales performance, O2 chose Imparta as its training partner to create rapid and large-scale upskilling of its salesforce. A pioneer in blended learning, Imparta had a track record of delivering the learning and behavioural change needed to transform business performance. Working closely together, O2’s Sales and L&D leaders and Imparta developed the Academy concept to leverage Imparta’s existing sales content and advanced learning technologies, and to develop new content and techniques, to deal with five key development challenges O2 faced:

(i)The challenge of moving from transactional to consultative selling and (ii) the need to introduce a best practice framework for a consistent sales approach was met by the proven and highly applicable sales methodology, ‘Creating Client Value’, which lies at the heart of Imparta’s approach to building sales capability.

O2 also needed to (iii, reinforce and measure the results of training and how well it was applied to real work situations – and then to (iv link the training with appraisals and performance management. This required extensive and consistent measurement of competencies and business results, and Imparta’s coaches and Client Impact managers were used to assess, collate and report on the results. Competency frameworks were developed for a range of different roles within the salesforce, and assessments against these competencies were used to set a baseline and to track individual improvement. Progress is rewarded as salespeople move up through the accreditation levels (Bronze, Silver, Gold and Platinum). Reports are also aggregated to teams and sectors results, enabling managers to plan development at the different levels.

(v) The fifth key development challenge was that Sales Managers were working as another member of the sales team rather than leveraging their experience to coach and develop team members. The managers’ role as coaches and observers of the sales behaviours being taught was fundamental to the success of the Academy and ‘Coach the Coach’ programmes to build their coaching capabilities were a main plank of their activity and assessment.

‘The O2 Sales Academy shows what a management can achieve when it is genuinely committed to change,’ says Richard Barkey, CEO of Imparta. ‘We’ve brought skills and techniques we know work well in driving sales performance, but the Academy’s outstanding success is down to O2 leaders making it central to their sales activity, from the initial launch, to motivating participants … to the extensive measurement that the drives ongoing plans for the sales organisation. Playing our part to build this with O2 has been an amazing experience for Imparta.’

For more Information on this release contact:

Jayne Heaford or Russell Turner
Marketing Department
Tel: +44 (0) 207 610 8823

Privacy Policy

Copyright © Imparta 1997-2010