“By giving our top global sellers access to information and support in the field, the thing that struck me was how we harnessed so much bottled-up energy. And we found this wonderful dynamic of enabling our best, who also want to pay back into the system.”
TODD
ALBRIGHT, WORLDWIDE HEAD OF SALES AND CHIEF
REVENUE OFFICER
“We’re taking a lot of what we know to be true and building on that frame- work with the systems we have. We have athletes, and I am a big believer that – if you give them the right, simple framework in the right processes – you’ll see the speed. So, from people, process, and technology perspectives, we’ve got the trifecta working with this transforma- tion, which gets me extremely excited about where we’re going.”
RYAN BLACKWELL, SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT OF GLOBAL SALES OPERATIONS
“I was energized because people were hungry for vision and leadership and direction.”
RUSTY WILEY, CEO
told them he wanted to simplify back to the core business, which meant divesting non-core divisions of the business and investing in future tech- nology platforms. “We have several loosely-aligned businesses that are not core,” he explains. “I told the board, ‘I’d like to sell several the non-core businesses and focus our talent and investment.’ They looked at me and said, ‘You’ve been here 60 days and you want to sell off a quarter of the revenue.’ I said, ‘Yes, they are not core; they are lower and declining margin, low growth, and they are commoditizing. And, by the way, they are not linked at all to our core value.’” But that wasn’t all. In his second meeting with the board Wiley present- ed an even more ambitious plan. He highlighted to the board the following: “If we are going to compete in the cloud in content sharing, collaboration, and communications, we can’t have 15-year-old legacy platforms that are not agile and can’t adapt. I shared our analysis on how much our competi- tors were spending on an annual basis on R&D, which dwarfed what Merrill had traditionally spent. And I firmly suggested we should consider selling the company if we were not willing to substantially increase investment in our core platforms,” Wiley recalls.
Wiley explained to the board how we could unlock economic multiples similar to our competitors through a strategic sales process or…(my strong preference) we can make these investments in the core platforms, which will reposition us to compete and create substantially higher long term client and share- holder value. This is when we com- mitted the company to accelerate beyond financial printing to being a global SaaS provider in the cloud. There are still challenges facing the team with smaller transitions ahead. The next transition is tackling the sales organization. Implementing a revised global sales process and enabling a world-class sales force with
better processes, tools and technol- ogy allowing them to move from just relationship selling to true sales execution. The sales transformation is well under way and the sales organi- zation will begin to reap the benefits of “Selling the Merrill Way”, instead of an aggregated process of indi- vidual business units. It is changing from that 1950s Mad Men model into a well-oiled professional machine, where the relationship sales process is expanding to include a software- guided consultative process. To hear, in their own words, the details of how Wiley, Albright, and Blackwell managed the dynamic Mer- rill transition, which is ongoing, watch the video.
INSIDE A SALES TRANSFORMATION
SELLING POWER JULY 2016 | 21 © 2016 SELLING POWER. CALL 1-800-752-7355 FOR REPRINT PERMISSION.
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