The Amdocs Story

The challenge

Amdocs, the market leader in customer experience systems innovation and a long standing client of Solutions for Sales, runs an annual multiday ‘Kick Off’. The objective of this event is to distribute key corporate and product messages to the salesforce. Seth Nesbitt, Vice President Product and Solutions Marketing, was charged with leading the ’08 event. Based on his own experience, the salesforce’s frustration with endless PowerPoint presentations and a new salesforce structure he knew Amdocs must change the way they delivered the key messages. He wanted to really inspire the 300 Amdocs salespeople attending the event and strengthen the relationships between Sales, Product Business Units and Marketing, whilst fulfilling the prime function – product training.

Action

SfS has worked with Amdocs as a trusted source of sales enablement services for a number of years, and was a natural first call for Seth. We debated initial ideas with Seth and the other key stakeholders, the Head of Marketing and the Head of Sales Operations. Clearly it was important to discover what the audience was hoping to get out of the event and how some of the knowledge transfer ‘barriers’ could be overcome. SfS also highlighted the value of finding out what the salespeople’s success criteria for the event were, what their preferred approach to learning was and what they did not want to hear. To answer these questions SfS ran a series of interviews with key stakeholders and used the results to design and deliver a series of interactive learning sessions to be run by the Amdocs Product and Marketing specialists.

These sessions tested whether the salespeople had understood the information presented, gave them the chance to apply it in simulated sales situations and created opportunities to discover extra information. The sessions focused on interactive learning, discovery and knowledge testing, rather than just a one way ‘telling’ of the information, and the structure created by SfS helped the session leaders present more of the sort of information that salespeople had identified as important.

As well as the structure, SfS delivered the materials needed by each session leader. We also provided one-to-one coaching for session leaders to help them select the interactive session that suited their needs, tailor it to the salesforce requirements and deliver it effectively.

Results

The result was a set of highly interactive training sessions, and therefore a much more productive experience for the audience. “Working with SfS for the Sales Kick-Off event meant we were able to deliver the information our salespeople really need in a way they enjoyed,” commented Seth Nesbitt, Vice President, Product and Solutions Marketing.

Paul Struthers, Solutions Marketing Director, continued, “the sessions were effective in delivering the product training required and made for a successful Sales Kick-Off event. The exercise also resulted in extra, tangible benefits for Amdocs. SfS up-skilled the Amdocs session leaders, helping them to become Sales Heroes.”

Chris Burton, President of Global Sales, was encouraged by feedback from the salesforce, “my team tell me these sessions helped make this one of the best Sales Kick Off events, not only here at Amdocs, but in many of the companies they have worked for.”

Not only did the salesforce get a valuable set of training sessions, but also the Product Business Unit session leaders learnt more about what salespeople need to know and how to present it in a way they find attractive. As a result both the Product Business Units and Sales teams developed skills that they will continue to use in the future, making them more effective and efficient Amdocs employees.

“SfS delivered a great set of interactive training modules, but more than this the skills they developed in our Product and Regional Marketing specialists has made for significantly improved communication with Sales and will be invaluable to the future working of these teams within Amdocs.”

Seth Nesbitt, Vice President, Product and Solutions Marketing

The Strategic Sales Program is only available from Solutions for Sales Ltd.

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