A large, multi-site organization had a 100 year history of being a service based organization that serves the public. With changing technology and competition eroding their revenue streams, top leadership recognized the need to transform the service based culture to a sales based culture. The challenge was to change the beliefs and habits of 750 employees in an integrity preserving fashion.
Our process began with a series of Strategy Meetings with the leadership team to clearly define the behavioral objectives and uncover obstacles to the corporate culture transformation. These Strategy Meetings continued throughout the multi-year process as additional obstacles were uncovered. Field and Site Management teams engaged in multi-day learning sessions that focused on the skills needed to manage a sales team and to redefine site objectives in terms of sales results.
The Employee Selection Process was revised to include psychometric assessments that provided customer focused candidates for all customer contact positions. Individual sites engaged in multi-month development processes that focused on personal performance, individual accountability and face-to-face customer contact skills. Corporate office personnel participated in personal performance sessions to support cultural change in the field. Field coaching was provided for the sites during the transformation process to insure behavioral change took hold.
The slow process of cultural change was successful with a sales based foundation in place for future growth. Sales performance dramatically increased. Turnover rates spiked during the initial phases of this enterprise wide system, then subsided. Individual sites established their own goals, and employee performance standards were set. Employee and customer satisfaction levels increased, and new hire up and running time was reduced.
“The program helped our team recognize that we are responsible for our business’s success. Some of the initiatives we have implemented since the program are: new client acquisition strategy, strategic alliances, community involvement strategy… These are ideas that our team came up with, developed a plan for and now are seeing results with. We regularly lean on the principles of goal setting, managing your emotions, and responsibility; so that we operate both harmoniously and effectively.”