RLI PROGRAM DRIVES $2 MILLION IN NEW SALES AND INCREASES PIPELINE BY 48%

IN A NUTSHELL

Scott Odom, VP of Strategic Accounts at Clover Imaging Group in Düsseldorf, Germany, deployed the RLI Selling Essentials online sales program in Clover’s European operation. Within three months his team made two sales totaling $2 million that he directly attributes to a concept learned in an RLI video on prospecting. An idea from another video on time management increased pipeline by 48%. “RLI has been fantastic for us,” says Scott. “For the money we spent, we’re really happy.”

CLOVER’S CHALLENGE

Change the “mindset” of its sales team

Clover made several European acquisitions in the past decade and had to create a unified culture with diverse, legacy salesforce. “The challenge was that we inherited sales teams in multiple countries,” says Scott. “They were set in their old ways, the market had changed, and sales were decreasing. We had to change the way they thought.”

Sales were decreasing. We had to change the way they thought.

Scott did his best to drive this change initiative by himself, but eventually wanted to bring in third-party expertise. So he hired local trainers, “but they came in for 2 days, charged a lot of money, and after two months whatever we learned went away,” says Scott. Part of the problem was that selling in Europe is different from selling in the U.S. “They’re hesitant to come across as pushy,” Scott says. “We’re an American company and we wanted them to learn to sell the American way.”

SCOTT’S SOLUTION

Short videos driven by academic and institutional research on selling best-practices

Scott decided to try an online sales training program but chose a firm that had long modules. “Nobody watched them,” he says. Then Scott discovered RLI. “I attended a Webinar and watched a few videos and I loved that they were short and simple. I got really good ideas from all the videos I watched.”

And he found that the videos promoted “the American way of selling.” Scott says, “By that I mean they just describe what works. The most powerful thing about RLI videos is the scientific research behind them. Without it, salespeople will watch a video and say, ‘That’s just someone’s opinion.’ When you’ve got research, it carries a lot more weight. People are more likely to react on it.” Short videos driven by academic and institutional research on selling best-practices

I got really good ideas from all the videos I watched.

RESULT

RLI videos led to new habits that had a huge impact on sales results

One of the programs Scott watched early on was “Prospecting: A Simple Way to Find Your Best Leads – Without Cold Calling.” He spotted “a great idea” from the video, a prospecting strategy deployed by Aaron Ross, a sales leader at Salesforce.com in its early years. The great idea was for reps to send an email to the general manager of a company asking for a referral to the purchasing agent. Scott asked his team to watch the video and try out the concept. The results were immediate. A sales rep quickly landed a $1.8 million deal. Another landed a $200k deal. “Without that video, the reps would never have come up with that idea,” says Scott. “That video led to $2 million in new sales.”

A few months later Scott had another success. His reps were struggling with prospecting and watched an RLI video called “Time Management for Sales: The Golden Hours.” The video was anchored in research showing that calling at optimal times yielded dramatically improved results. Scott conducted a test and determined that the best calling times for Clover were Monday and Friday between 8 a.m. and 11 a.m. “Because of that video, we changed our calling habits, started making far more contacts, and increased pipeline by 48%.”

SCOTT’S BEST ADVICE FOR DEPLOYING RLI

Model the way, then set them free

Let people know you want them to use the program, but don’t just tell people to ‘go watch the videos.’ I’ll spend some time in one of our offices meeting with the salespeople and going through the library with them. We’ll watch programs together. I’ll point things out that I think are important, and that I want them to use. I think mainly because of the credibility of the research, they actually follow the advice. Eventually, because it worked so well, they started using the program on their own without me even telling them to.”