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Sales Training Success: CustomerCentric Selling® Helps NorthEast Electrical Improve Sales Performance and Seize Market Share

Key Player
VP of Sales

Goals
NorthEast Electrical Distributors, a full-service electrical distributor to Electrical Contractors, Industrial, OEM, Utility, and Institutional customers, first approached CustomerCentric Selling® (CCS™) to address several business needs. Shawn Mumma, Vice President of Sales for NorthEast Electrical, worked with Sharon Parker, CCS™ Business Partner, to achieve the following goals:

• Secure premium pricing and avoid unnecessary discounts.
• Establish a simple sales process that the entire sales organization could use and follow.
• Create a common sales culture.
• Shorten the sales cycle and reduce the time needed to secure opportunities.
• Improve the win rate.
• Improved gross margins by .5% annually for the next five years and maintain increase at a lesser rate of .25% going forward.
• Establish a methodology of value-based selling that focuses on the customer.

Current Situation
After evaluating several sales training providers, Shawn chose the CustomerCentric Selling® methodology due to a number of reasons:

• Intuitive and easy to use/follow given the streamlined approach.
• The sales methodology supports the value-based selling approach needed.
• Can be learned and reinforced effectively due to the simplicity and uniformity of the sales process.
• Highly recommended by a key supplier who also had experience with the CustomerCentric Selling® methodology.

Capabilities Needed
With the assistance from Sharon, Shawn and NorthEast Electrical were able to achieve each of their defined goals as well as the following capabilities using the CustomerCentric Selling® sales methodology:

• A consistent, repeatable sales process, that: 1) all salespeople can be taught to execute; 2) management can be taught to monitor, coach, and inspect; and 3) represents NorthEast Electrical’s best sales practices.
• Shortened sales cycle and reduced the time to close opportunities.
• Sales tools/templates and unified messaging that allow salespeople to converse and diagnose a prospect’s business issues with bias toward NorthEast Electrical’s offerings.
• Increased win or ‘sales hit’ rate.
• The ability to converse and define with the prospect, the steps in the evaluation process, what has to happen and when, that would allow the prospect to make an informed purchase decision, shorten the sales cycle, and eliminate no decisions.
• Sustainable sales growth through consistently exceeding budgeted annual sales.

Results:

• Increased sales
• Seized control of market share
• Increased gross margin by 3 points over a 3 year period
• Growth rate of 1.5 to 2 times GDP (Gross Domestic Product)
• Increased hit (win) rate to nearly 45% from 30%
• Dramatically improved sales performance
• Unified sales process that all salespeople can follow

Customer Close-up

NorthEast is a full-service electrical distributor to Electrical Contractors, Industrial, OEM, Utility, and Institutional customers. With its Industrial/OEM Division, NorthEast Electrical Distributors has grown into one of the largest electrical distributors in New England offering 32 convenient locations. The company operates these 32 strategically located branch locations throughout the 6 New England States in order to make exceptional customer service available to our customers.

NorthEast prides itself on its value-added service offerings and its highly trained and knowledgeable staff. We have built a solid and compelling foundation of product, distribution, and customer relations. With one of the largest product offerings in New England, superior logistics, shared resources and strong vendor relations, NorthEast provides the highest level of customer service.

For more information, visit http://www.needco.com

About CustomerCentric Selling®
CustomerCentric Selling® (CCS®) is a proven methodology for predictably improving revenue growth and sales performance. Founded in 2002, CCS® helps clients worldwide to implement repeatable, auditable and scalable sales processes that, when combined with Sales Ready Messaging®, guides marketing and sales to have meaningful conversations with customers and prospects. This results in winning high-value deals, retaining and growing client relationships and improving the predictability and accuracy of sales forecasts. CustomerCentric Selling® is regularly named to the Top Sales Training Companies list. Clients such as Microsoft, Hewlett Packard, Business Objects, Rockwell Automation, EMC and Raytheon have deployed CCS® worldwide. For more information, visit www.customercentric.com or call Jill Perez at +1.800.993.1228, ext 706.