Newsquest
Our Client - Providing Sales Leadership capability company wide
Newsquest, a Gannett company, is the UK's second largest publisher of local newspapers. They also have over 161 local media brand websites and have the largest audited online audience of any local newspaper publisher in the UK.
The Issue
The need to engage with SBR Consulting was driven, in part, by the wider market context in which Newsquest found itself. In recent years the newspaper industry has moved towards a multi-media platform and therefore, as a company with ambitious growth plans, Newsquest’s leadership wished to equip its people with the skills this demanded.
As well as the goal of commercial benefit, the people-centric goals such as: the retention of great employees, the ability to attract good salespeople and generally to renew or maintain Newsquest’s employees’ enthusiasm for their jobs, meant that the development of the sales and sales leadership programme although vast and ambitious was essential. This was not merely a ‘training programme’ but a catalyst for change within the business.
Our Approach
SBR Consulting’s model of sales leadership was chosen because it reflects both the importance of leading by example whilst providing real life practical tools to support the development of salespeople. The philosophy of “People not Paper” was an integral part of the programmes success. This type of approach was designed to enable managers to move away from an admin-focused style of leadership to one that was based on driving performance more through individual coaching and understanding. It placed the emphasis upon the manager spending quality time with their team.
After extensive research and consultation with a cross section of Newsquest Managers, SBR Consulting developed a sales management programme designed to bring sales leadership skills to the entire sales management team (from first line to senior managers), over 250 individuals
The roll out and delivery of the sales leadership programme took place over two years.
Part of the success was a focus and implementation around measuring Critical Success Factor’s for salespeople. Historically, the major part of the data capture process had been by the management for a budgeting and tracking sales revenue process.
The change, firstly to amend the name from KPI’s and SOP’s, was to: help managers and individuals to track their performance back to activity; to manage training needs analysis; and to develop a culture of development and learning, giving all individuals a clear area or track to run on as to what their individual areas were to help achieve and exceed target.
The Result
Newsquest now have a clear implementation of Critical Success Factor’s. Leadership have been able to get a clearer insight into individual sales person performance levels giving them greater clarity to identify areas of potential improvement, capture specific examples of success which can therefore be duplicated throughout the business.
There is greater transparency as to why top performers are achieving high revenues from being able to measure activity and effectiveness at each stage of the sales process.
Sales manager and sales leaders are now much more confident working with their people as sales coaches and helping them see where to focus their development.
In spite of the industry challenges at the moment, the leadership programme has been one of the highlights within Newsquest and has given skills, stability and support to the leaders having to make tough decisions.
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