Project Initiator:

Director of Sales & Marketing, Macmillan Education Primary (MEP)

Assignment Period:

April 2015 – March 2016

Macmillan business need:

MEP’s core focus is to provide a more holistic solution to schools’ needs to identify gaps and ultimately improve student learning outcomes.  As a result a deeper understanding of our customers and more targeted approach is needed. Therefore, we are adapting our sales team design and sales processes accordingly. Senior Management also identified an optimisation question over the shape of the Primary Schools Sales Team and the constitution of salaried staff vs commissioned agents.

The Next Level Business Solution:

The Next Level quantified the return on investment of our Primary sales team and propose strategies to improve it. First among these was to better target our customer & prospect schools, and they achieved this by procuring a set of data that enabled them to profile each Australian Primary school in terms of its historical sales, and the potential sales possible. This meant we could overhaul our sales territories to better meet the highest priority commitments in each region. In parallel, The Next Level undertook research (including online surveys and face to face interviews) with industry experts and company stakeholders that provided valuable inputs into the challenges & opportunities in the industry, as well as the design of our visit regimen to best respond to these opportunities & challenges.

The Results So Far:

We have embedded the new sales territories into our internal CRM and reporting systems, and our sales team have a clear understanding of the expectations to effectively manage their customers & prospects.

We extended our work with The Next Level to perform customer & prospect classification and territory development in the New Zealand Primary & Secondary school market, and have also embedded these outputs unto our New Zealand team’s practices.

Looking Ahead:

In an industry in the midst of significant change and the uncertainties that accompany this, The Next Level has been a reliable, consistent and high quality driver in structuring our sales teams to meet its upcoming challenges and opportunities.