Project Initiator:
Darren Dubrich, Victorian Gyprock Trade Centres Manager
Zoran Jovanovski, Southern Regional Manager Gyprock
Assignment Period:
July 2011 – July 2012
CSR Gyprock Business Need:
Over the course of two to three years, we had built up a toolkit of processes and systems to assist our Trade Centre Managers and their teams increase their effectiveness on the key customer facing functions, including sales and customer service. Additionally this toolkit contained elements to assist the Managers in their team building and leadership.
However, our resourcing at the levels of Management above the Trade Centre network was such that we did not have the capacity to adequately provide on-going coaching for the Trade Centre Managers in the best use of the tools and systems we had provided them. And even if we did, we saw that to bring out the maximum potential in our Trade Centre Managers required some external expertise and perspective. We could see that a number of our Managers were struggling to make the progression to the level of professionalism we had set as a benchmark.
The Next Level Business Solution:
The Next Level took our brief and then came back with a range of their suggested value adds. We collaboratively designed the program to have their business/sales coaches visit the Trade Centres on a monthly basis and provide dedicated one on one coaching for our Managers. One of their value adds was to introduce a type of peer-to-peer benchmarking scoreboard. This scoreboard featured data relating to the relevant metrics in the Trade Centre environment, and presented the results in league table style across the range of key metrics. This monthly report became a key component of the coaching sessions.
The Results So Far:
Early into the program, The Next Level provided objective feedback to us in regards to which Managers were likely to “make the grade” and which ones not. As the months rolled on, we could see a good percentage of our Managers embrace the coaching and become more time managed and prioritised, more sales focused and better goal setting oriented. We were in a difficult trading environment and a contracting market, but we could see through the sales figures that in Victoria we were eroding our competitors market share.
Looking Ahead:
With a subsequent change of structure that somewhat alleviated the original problem of not enough internal management resource to provide on-going coaching for our Trade Centre Managers, the program ran its duration and served its purpose. We are aware of The Next Level’s capability in sales team optimisation and see this as a potential platform for future engagement.