manufacturing resource in addition to being a source for last-minute parts and prototyping, the pressure was on to see improvement and get back on track before year end – launching new capabilities at the same time.
THE ASSESSMENT
Pivotal Advisors, the sales manage- ment firm, came in June 2016 to as- sess Protolabs’ current sales organiza- tion in the Americas and Europe. Pivotal Advisors implemented its standard assessment in six primary areas: strategy, people, process, mea- surements, rewards, and the execution/ management system. “Central to our assessment was the sales leadership. We wanted to evaluate how we could best help the front-line sales leaders do the things that would help the company going forward,” explains Pivotal Advi- sors owner/partner Mike Braun. As part of this assessment, the Piv- otal Advisors team interviewed almost 50 people at all levels of the organiza- tion – from the CEO to front-line sales and sales support. “We were looking at strategies and processes. Were they being implemented consistently? Was there accountability? Were the salespeople given the right feedback and direction?” says Pivotal Advisors owner and partner Gary Braun. Recalls Protolabs Vice President and General Manager Robert Bodor, “What they brought to the table right away with the assessment was a comprehensive framework to look at our sales organization and our selling capabilities, so we could assess our- selves and develop an actionable plan. While we already had some aspects of this, we didn’t have the full framework to drive and govern our team.”
THE ASSESSMENT FINDINGS The assessment results were reveal- ing. Since their business needs were changing, Protolabs had to make a shift in several key areas. For instance, the salespeople had been doing what they were asked – and were succeed- ing by their current measures – but the company growth rate was slowing
‘‘
The hard part is typically getting everyone to adopt the changes.”
down and the company needed to expand the capabilities of the sales teams to sell an increasingly com- plex portfolio with multiple value propositions.
In addition, Pivotal Advisors found that the front-line sales managers were spread thin. Each manager was trying to manage 15 to 20 people – many of whom were early in their sales careers.
Senior management was seeing some trends that caused concern and felt the strategy for how the company wanted to approach their accounts needed to change. For the sales team, this required changes to the sales incentive systems. The challenge was the sales team liked the current incentive system and didn’t have exposure to the trends that were com- ing – so it would be difficult for them to understand the need for change. Protolabs’ success masked un- derlying challenges. Very robust e-commerce lead generation had driven sales success for years. The salespeople worked diligently just to react to the demand. With this strong growth rate, the business did not require the fundamental systems critical to a healthy and sustainable sales function.
PIVOTAL ADVISORS’ RECOM- MENDATIONS AND STRATEGIES Some changes happened quickly. Pivotal Advisors Partner Steve Hoeft joined Protolabs for about a year as acting VP of sales for the Americas, to provide leadership as the company put a program in place and looked for a permanent sales leader. He served as the consistent point person for the transformation and was there five days a week. Together, Protolabs and Pivotal Ad- visors set out to change the sales ap-
proach – away from focusing only on bringing in new engineers – toward managing, nurturing, and growing a “book of business” and deepening their relationships in multiple areas of their customers’ businesses, includ- ing supply chain, quality, and senior leadership.
This was a big mind shift and would
require both new skills and a new level of business acumen and plan- ning. Together, Pivotal Advisors and Protolabs created a project plan that affected their sales team structure, compensation, metrics, and hiring parameters. The approach required intensive training. “The managers were all in. They bore down to prep and conduct the training so that they could be- come highly proficient and reinforce it with their teams,” recalls Hoeft. Adds Bodor, “We were very com- mitted to providing all our sales representatives with the coaching, mentorship, training, and skills to be successful.” In addition to intensive training to help the entire sales team understand the new approach, recom- mendations included: Reducing the sales manager-to- salesperson ratio closer to 10:1. Hiring additional sales leaders would provide more opportunities to coach those salespeople still early in their careers. Changing the hiring profile for salespeople. “The focus needed to shift to people five to seven years into their sales careers, who had better skills for planning and expanding with- in an account,” explains Mike Braun. Recreating the sales playbook. Everything from planning and account management approaches to time management techniques needed to be carefully outlined. Changing core metrics from new transactions to account develop-
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