Delivering a world-wide sales and sales management programme for technical salespeople to meet a new business development focus of one of Europe's leading producers of coatings.

Background

Becker Acroma is a subsidiary of the Becker Group, a Swedish company which is one of Europe’s leading producers of coatings for metals, wood and artist materials. Becker Acroma has a turnover of approximately $250m, employing 900 people. They specialise in wood finishing and have seven production plants across Europe and are a major supplier to IKEA.

Becker Acroma’s worldwide market is experiencing very different growth rates across the regions and countries, declining in Western Europe, growing in Eastern Europe and the Far East. Becker Acroma has an international sales force who have a technical background and predominantly provide technical advice and practical demonstrations for their clients.

Objectives

To achieve their business objectives within the varying climates of growth and decline Becker Acroma knew their salespeople needed to apply more sales skills to drive new business as opposed to concentrating solely on the clients’s technical needs.

Their aim was to re-enforce this change in the attitude towards a clear sales role and introduce sales development skills for their sales people. Training was needed for both salespeople and their managers in all the countries where Becker Acroma operate. Whilst a consistent set of skills was needed internationally the approach also had to reflect local cultures and the special needs in each country.

Response

Over the last 3 years, TACK has been working with Becker Acroma in the UK and has agreed a worldwide sales development programme with TACK. TACK has developed a two-day basic selling skills programme for trainers to deliver to teams of technical sales people which will take place in 14 countries and in 11 languages.

The foundation of this training is the TACK Sales Training Course and based on local input adaptations have been made to meet the cultural and operational differences across the countries. Becker-Acroma launched their sales and sales management development programme at their Christmas Conference at their HQ in Sweden, followed by a number of three-day sales management courses for all the sales managers and other key managers worldwide. The sales management programme included one day on the sales skills that their sales people would be undertaking to allow them to follow-up, coach and manage their people more effectively.

Results so far

The impact of the training programme is currently being evaluated but the feedback on the first part of the programmes has been well received by the attendees. The sales management feedback has been very positive and they are keen for their people to benefit from the training as soon as possible.