The future of sales training

Revolutionising sales training

Accor­dance VAT have been using iCon­nect to rev­o­lu­tion­ize the way train­ing is deliv­ered to their sales force, con­sid­er­ably increas­ing rev­enue and efficiency.

“We’ve increased our rev­enue by 24% on the same peri­od last year”

Lucy Franklin, Sales Director

Induction: time and capacity limitations

Accor­dance VAT is a rapid­ly grow­ing com­pa­ny with a reg­u­lar intake of new starters join­ing their sales team. Before iCon­nect, sales train­ing was a time-con­sum­ing process and Lucy Franklin, Sales Direc­tor at Accor­dance VAT, was con­cerned about how effec­tive this was.

“We want­ed to get peo­ple up to speed more quick­ly. I was con­cerned about the amount of time senior team mem­bers were spend­ing train­ing staff, which ulti­mate­ly meant they were spend­ing less time gen­er­at­ing their own business.” 

Lucy Franklin, Sales Director

Accor­dance VAT intro­duced iCon­nect to make sales train­ing more engag­ing, ensure that learn­ing is embed­ded across the sales team, and make sales train­ing more flex­i­ble and accessible. 

To do this, they began using the iCon­nect app to record role plays and sales calls from their best consultants. 

The solution

iConnect’s edit­ing and time-stamped com­men­tary tools were used to analyse spe­cif­ic sell­ing skills such as ques­tion­ing. Fur­ther resources were then added before shar­ing with the rest of the team, mak­ing sales train­ing eas­i­ly accessible. 

This allowed expe­ri­enced and new­er con­sul­tants alike to access high-qual­i­ty train­ing with­out exhaust­ing the resources of sales man­agers. As a result, onboard­ing, coach­ing and upskilling, became faster and had a much greater impact.

“Using call and video record­ings are so much more engag­ing and we found our new hires get­ting to grips with our lan­guage, process­es and sell­ing style far more quick­ly. Speed to com­pe­ten­cy in our sales team has increased dra­mat­i­cal­ly.” — Rober­ta Fol­ta, Senior BDM 

Self-reflection and Coaching

“At Accor­dance, train­ing and coach­ing doesn’t just stop after onboarding”

Lau­ren Trig­well, Senior BDM

But Accor­dance VAT didn’t stop there. To fur­ther trans­form their sales train­ing, the whole sales team start­ed using iCon­nect to record them­selves dur­ing sales calls with cus­tomers and poten­tial clients. This allowed them to:

• Reflect on their own per­for­mance to insti­gate change
• Share exam­ples with peers and managers
• Receive mean­ing­ful, con­tex­tu­al­ized feed­back on real practice

 

“By using video cap­ture to record real-prac­tice exam­ples sales man­agers were able to coach and feed­back to their teams more often and with bet­ter results. As a result coach­ing and men­tor­ing is now a reg­u­lar part of ongo­ing sales train­ing and devel­op­ment”. Lau­ren Trig­well, Senior BDM 

Sales con­sul­tants have also start­ed shar­ing their prac­tice with oth­er team mem­bers for learn­er-led coach­ing and peer support.

  iCon­nect allows man­agers and team mem­bers to view each other’s sales exam­ples at a time suit­able to them. It means as a team we can pro­vide more peer sup­port, men­tor­ing and coach­ing with­out it impact­ing our day to day work. We’ve all improved as a result.” Lau­ren Trig­well, Senior BDM

Down­load your free guide to devel­op­ing high per­form­ing sales teams >

The future

The sales team aren’t fin­ished though, they plan to fur­ther utilise iConnect’s analy­sis tools to cap­ture data around their sales approach.

“We realise it’s all about data these days. We’ve start­ed mov­ing away from only pro­vid­ing ver­bal and writ­ten feed­back to our team and becom­ing more sci­en­tif­ic in our approach to sales.”

Lucy Franklin, Sales Director

“We’ve already start­ed using the iCon­nect Forms fea­ture to mea­sure the type of ques­tions we ask and how engaged our audi­ence are. We plan to take this much fur­ther over the com­ing months.”

Rober­ta Fol­ta, Senior BDM

Organisation-wide development

Pio­neered by the sales team, the suc­cess of iCon­nect has meant Accor­dance VAT have begun to use the plat­form to enhance train­ing across their entire orga­ni­za­tion, lead­ing to con­sis­tent and effec­tive train­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties for all staff.

More about the iCon­nect technology »

Accor­dance is an inter­na­tion­al VAT con­sul­tan­cy and VAT com­pli­ance firm. Their aim is to enable busi­ness­es to trade inter­na­tion­al­ly, by pro­vid­ing spe­cial­ist VAT com­pli­ance ser­vices to remove the bur­den of cross-bor­der VAT.
Expe­ri­enced VAT con­sul­tants spe­cial­is­ing in cross-bor­der trans­ac­tions pro­vide prac­ti­cal, com­mer­cial­ly ben­e­fi­cial VAT assis­tance to com­pa­nies across the EU and beyond – work­ing across a range of indus­tries and busi­ness sizes, includ­ing many inter­na­tion­al FTSE 100 and Glob­al 500 businesses.Accordance offers a sin­gle point of con­tact for inter­na­tion­al VAT – their one-stop shop makes it eas­i­er for clients to man­age their inter­na­tion­al position.