Animal Magic - B2B Business Solution
Introduction
In our experience, what separates successful businesses from their less prosperous counterparts is their ability to articulate their strategy and demonstrate to their sales team the crucial steps they need to take to expand. Providing new recruits to the sales team with a document that explains the sales and client relationship building process is a powerful contributor for growth.
One client that we helped to articulate and document their way of doing business, is a virtual provider of specialist veterinary advice. Using an innovative digital platform, they enable live, real-time interactions between a vet working with their patient in practice, and a veterinary specialist based in a different location.
Challenge:
The founders of this pioneering B2B business had successfully proved their concept by attracting both clients and funding. Now they were looking to scale up. That meant hiring new people – who were all former vets with little or no commercial experience – to join their start-up. Once hired the new recruits would be responsible for finding vets in the UK who might appreciate the value of the service within their own practice.
The founders faced two issues: first, they knew they weren’t sales people so lacked confidence in whether they could hire effective sales people. Second; how could they take all the information that was locked in their heads and turn it into an easy-to-follow and understandable road map for future recruits - for whom the word sales was probably a very dirty word!
Solution:
Working with both founders we adopted a two-step approach. We began by reading through all relevant information they had on the business, its objectives, and how they went about attracting new clients. We then took what we had learned and turned it into a first of many drafts of a ‘playbook’ that explained what the business did, the market in which it competes, and the various stages of their sales process. We also included potential objectives for the first six months for a new joiner to the commercial team. Once this document was agreed we were then able to help with the hiring process by interviewing short-listed candidates to assess their sales skills and attitude to learning.
Outcome:
The business is gaining significant traction and is looking to take on more people to keep up with demand. The founders now have another perspective on which to base their hiring decisions helping to minimise the risk, and cost, of a mis-hire. With access to the playbook new members of the commercial team are becoming more effective more quickly, driving further growth and improving client, and patient, outcomes.
Tagged as: B2B, Small Business
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