Gurit Increased Pipeline Value by 28.4%

Background

Gurit has established itself as a developer and innovator in the composites industry, supplying the automotive, marine, aerospace and wind energy sectors. With headquarters in Switzerland, the sales teams are based around the globe, organised in three main regions – Americas, EMEA and APAC.

The company were facing increased competition from competitors in their principal markets, high rates of market volatility and, at the same time, more sophisticated procurement behaviours from their clients.

To continue to develop the business and protect margins, Gurit needed to:

• Build resilience to market fluctuations in all geographic regions by adding a broader range of market opportunities to the pipeline, and
• Optimise the win rate while improving margin by implementing a global best practice sales methodology.

Imparta was selected as the right partner to drive this change.

The Gurit Sales Academy

To address Gurit’s commercial priorities, Imparta worked with them to develop a global Sales Academy, bringing together all aspects of the development of their sales teams. The Academy is required to deliver training in a format which suits Gurit’s global decentralised structure and has five principal objectives:

• Drive the adoption of a core set of tools within a client-centric selling framework to shift the conversation from specification or price to value.
• Ensure sales teams are able to adapt and apply the sales tools to localised sales opportunities.
• Enhance the sales coaching skills of regional sales directors and managers.
• Improve the presentation skills of the salespeople to deliver the Gurit value proposition with greater impact.
• Combine the efficiencies of online digital learning with the effectiveness of face-to-face coaching on real-life account opportunities.

Many of Gurit’s salespeople come from predominantly technical backgrounds and have received little formal sales training. To support their development, and to drive the required behaviour changes, the Academy covers a comprehensive 12-month learning journey for the sales teams and their managers.

This journey combines multiple activities and delivery methods, including over 60 hours of interactive digital learning through Imparta’s Virtual Sales Academy (VSA), online simulations to practise new sales skills, assessed role-plays, coached work-based activities, and support toolkits and workshops (known as Bunkai sessions) to help salespeople apply their learning to their live opportunities.

The Gurit Sales Academy Learner Journey

Imparta worked with Gurit to ensure the Academy sits at the centre of a broader change process. We know this ‘change, not training’ approach yields far greater results than training alone.

Impact

After the first six months of training, we evaluated together the early impact of the Academy on a sample group of 50% of the Academy’s participants. The analysis focused on the impact the new sales capabilities have had on two sales metrics – deals in the pipeline and win probability – using Imparta’s online Business Impact Capture Tool.

Emlyn Middleton, Imparta’s Client Director for Gurit, highlighted some of the reasons for the success of the Gurit Sales Academy:

‘The key factor for success has been the team at Gurit. Their commitment to change, right across the business, was really refreshing – this is a business transformation, not a training initiative for them. Their openness to new ideas and collaborative ways of working meant they got the very best from our team. Finally the incredibly high level of engagement, energy and motivation of everyone around the business has made sure the Gurit Sales Academy will deliver ongoing value well beyond the core programme. We look forward to helping Gurit build on the initial successes and drive their sales performance to new heights over the coming year.’