As the service side of the business received accolades, the sales effort at Allegro Staffing Services had struggled for years. According to David Johnson, Co-President, he felt they had hired a good team of salespeople, yet, something was missing in their approach, as indicated in the results. “Our sales team seemed to be putting in a lot of effort and they appeared to be out in the field, connecting with prospects and customers. However, our sales remained flat, our margins were not improving, and we knew there was business to be had in our market. We clearly needed some help.”
That’s when Dave and his partner, Tim Thompson, Co-President, approached Scott Wintrip of the Wintrip Consulting Group (WCG). Both knew of Scott’ reputation for helping companies create nonstop growth and perpetual profits and Tim had recently seen him deliver very impactful keynotes at several industry events. “Not only did we want Scott to help us ascertain why our sales effort was failing, we wanted him to create a solution and facilitate the full implementation of that solution. To be blunt, we knew that we were not the ones who were going to effectively lead our sales team out of the rut they we in. On top of that, we were busy running a successful company and know that we didn’t have the time to run this project.
To understand why Allegro was experiencing success in service and challenges in selling, Scott designed a process to assess the situation. This included:
- A comprehensive discovery process using WCG’s Needs Analysis Process.
- In-depth interviews with leadership and team members.
- Field observations of the sales efforts and process.
- Face-to-face interactions and conversations with prospects and clients.
- Market analysis using WCG’s proprietary research methods.
As a result of this comprehensive approach, Scott quickly determined that Allegro needed to:
- Refine the sales approach to communicate value to customers in a much more provocative manner.
- Enhance sales activities, including a better balance between the components of the sales and marketing system.
- Revamp the consultative sales approach to improve how Allegro indentified and responded to client needs.
- Repackage customer solutions to offer additional value and earn higher margins.
Since Dave and Tim had chosen to have Scott implement the process, things started moving quickly during the next phase. Not only did Scott facilitate the entire change process, he also served as a co-manager in his role as consultant as well. “Scott’s leadership of the sales efforts is one of the things I’ve been most impressed with,”commented Tim. “Even though he has been with us onsite only occasionally, he’s been able to provide more effective management of the sales effort than full-time sales managers have ever been able to deliver.”
“Within a matter of weeks, we were already seeing an improvement,” said Dave. “Sales activities climbed very quickly and new business followed shortly thereafter. And there was an excitement and a buzz in the sales department that I don’t believe I’ve ever experienced at Allegro. Even though there was quite a bit of change for the sales team, Scott was able to achieve and retain a high level of buy-in.”
Allegro’s growth went from flat to sustained growth within the first two months of the start of the project and the impact was immediately felt as the service side of the operation was flooded with new orders. Improvements in the measures monitored as part of the project included:
- Volume of business brought in by each salesperson jumped as much as 1200%.
- Revenues per sales rep increased anywhere from 20 to 200% in the first four months.
- Profits climbed at an equal pace, with overall gross margins improving five points in just the first nine months.
“To say Scott is a miracle worker would be stretching things a bit,” chuckled Dave. “However, his efforts far exceeded what we thought possible in such a short period of time. We’ve also seen a huge leap in the abilities and maturity level of many of our account managers. They are walking tall, speaking more confidently, and smiling…a lot. They should be; they’re making buckets of money.”
Allegro has kept Scott engaged to help sustain what’s been accomplished and help the company enhance the highly acclaimed service team and plan and implement their expansion plans. “When you find a good thing, you hold on tight. We’ve got that in Scott and WCG and we don’t plan to let go,” commented Tim.
