If you’re company is in need of a consultant who can provide ‘breakthrough’ results in sales productivity then I strongly recommend Jed and the Centre For Sales Excellence.  I have used many organisations and consultants in my 15 years in sales to help introduce ‘new ideas’  and ways to increase productivity and growth, but we had reached a point when the annual cycle of sales training, presentation skills and redesigning the incentive plans or sales territories was showing diminishing returns.

I had heard that some organisation had achieved interesting results using a methodology called six sigma and a colleague introduced me to Jed.  I now know that there are few people with Jed’s expertise and knowledge in this area. He introduced us to and helped us understand how six sigma could be used to measure and identify the enormous potential that existed within our sales organisation.
As a result we increased average selling time by 42% across the whole sales team, build prospect qualification criteria and strike-zone descriptions that improved our ‘prospect to order’ conversion rate by 50% and enhance sales executive satisfaction with their sales leader by 80%.

I recommend Jed and the CSE to your business!

I had been in sales and marketing for 18 years when I joined my new company as the sales leader for Europe & Asia. Inheriting both direct and indirect sales teams in a number different countries.  I was faced with the challenge of quickly assessing the levels of competence and risk in each of these teams so that I could determine where I could most effectively support and lead the teams to realise our significant growth plans.

Using the CSE Growth Capability Model and diagnostic tool enabled me to quickly identify the strengths and gaps within each team. From there the identification of both local and global growth initiatives was relatively easy.  One extremely valuable, but expected benefit came from the opportunity to observe the teams as they discussed and made their assessments.  This provided me with many useful insights in to the individuals and teams that I still use today.

I would strongly endorse the use of the Growth Capability Model to any new, or experienced,  sales leader who wants to quickly and effectively understand where they can make their mark and create their own growth agenda within their new sales organisation.

Jed’s approach to the application of six sigma in the sales and marketing domain has a clarity, realism and intelligence that is both refreshing and effective.  Whilst many would accept that sales leadership often lacks, and could benefit from the greater structure, process and rigor that six sigma could give, it rare to find an individual who understands how to get the balance right and the engagement flexible enough for it to work in the sales environment.  Even after achieving a lot of success using six sigma to deliver breakthrough improvements in operations and the back office, we had always struggled to get an effective level of engagement in the front end of the business.

Jed helped us to develop and implement a set of best practices for ‘six sigma in sales’ that are simple and incredibly effective.  By implementing a number of these six sigma initiatives within one of our national sales team, we were able to achieve not only greater engagement  from  our sales teams, we also achieved breakthrough improvements in sales executive retention, time to first deal, fee capture and pricing.

I am delighted that we chose the Centre For Sales Excellence to design and deliver our Sales Leader Development Program .  By customising the program to reflect the experience and knowledge within our sales leadership team, and the best practices that would deliver immediate benefits in terms of growth, and alignment the program resulted in a number of positive breakthroughs in the way that we lead and manage our sales team.

The monthly coaching of all participants following the course also ensured that we achieved 100% implementation and consistent adoption of the prioritised new practices of pipeline management, conversion rate reporting, targeted development coaching and an operating rhythm focused on growth.

I give their sales leader development program my highest recommendation for any organisation that is looking to take their sales leadership competences to the next level in order to create a competitive advantage.

Jed and the Centre For Sales Excellence were recommended to me by a business contact. I have interviewed and assessed many sales productivity providers in the past and none has been anywhere near as good as CSE.

Their care in understanding what we really wanted and what challenges we faced before they started to suggest options and interventions was refreshing.  The range of interventions that they were able to offer and the degree to which they were able to customise them to our culture and maturity was exactly what we needed to engage the whole of the leadership team.

They then helped us to dove-tail their offerings with our existing practices and programs where appropriate so that what the organisation saw was an integrated SFE program with clear goals and priorities.

In addition to the SFE planning workshops that they facilitated, and the surveying of the entire sales team to understand their concerns and issues, the training in six sigma that they provided allowed us to start the program with two standard six sigma initiatives; maximising selling time and ‘call to meeting conversion rates’.  As a result, we achieved a 31% increase in sales in 9 months, at a time when the average industry growth rate was less than 10%.