TelavoxAccelerating sales by changing conversations

Who is Telavox?

Telavox is a Swedish SaaS company. They provide a unified communications platform and develop communication solutions using technology that is inventive, dependable and easy to use. Their mission is to create a world-leading Swedish IT company offering both world-class user experiences and seamlessly integrated mobile services. 

Changing the focus from product features to customer value when selling

Telavox’s aim was to increase top line. They wanted to do so by changing the leadership model and equipping the sales organisation with the knowledge and experience of selling based on customer value rather than product features.

To succeed, Telavox defined areas in their organisation where they wanted to see development. They wanted:

• Customer interactions to be less focused on technical features and instead driven by an exploration of the values that Telavox enables.
• Customers to express that the Telavox representatives guide them in their decision-making process and are able to challenge them when needed.
• Sales representatives to be highly motivated and supported by a common way of working.
• Sales leaders to be able to coach, develop and continuously improve the organisation.

Way of selling: seeing sales leap by 28% in one year

Telavox chose to work with Implement on their transformation journey. They were looking for something different than their previous experience of traditional consulting and chose us due to our collaborative and co-creative approach to the project as well as our cultural fit to Telavox as an organisation.

At the start of the project, Telavox had a very clear vision of a desired future state. Together, Implement and Telavox “challenged” the vision, co-created alternatives and aligned the way forward to make it happen. The project was then initiated by co-creating the solution and defining the project plan and sprints.

In a tight collaboration, we defined and implemented the project Way of selling, consisting of:

• Mapping the customer buying journey
• Building new sales process centred around the buying journey and the customer experience
• Defining and selecting sales tools and aids

First, the commercial front line was trained in the new way of selling. After that, the next step was to make sure the new behaviours were reinforced in the long term: it was time to co-create a new way of leading the sales organisation.

We co-created a leadership model (Way of leading sales) consisting of:

• Physical and virtual win rooms
• Deal radar
• Coaching tools
• Sales leadership training
• Implement coaching of sales leaders

All the way through the project, we took a collaborative/co-creative approach. If we had not done so, we would not have been able to reach an “optimal” solution and get acceptance of the solution throughout Telavox’s organisation.

The Way of selling project delivered great results. In one year, Telavox saw a 28% increase in new sales, a 100% increase in NPS, and employee satisfaction also increased by almost 100%. In addition, Telavox was awarded “commercial company of the year”.

The secret behind Telavox’s commercial acceleration

Change the way you lead ⇒ to change the way you sell

Telavox conducts complex B2B sales. Here, many factors are coming into play, determining success or failure.

In this project, some of the crucial success factors were:

Focus on two conversations

• The conversation between sales manager and sales representative
• The conversation between sales representative and customer

It’s ours! Creating the Telavox Way of selling

Instead of choosing a standard method from the market, we developed and labelled our specific way of selling. Way of working enabled the specific behavioural change that we were aiming for.

We started with a limited number of tools/frameworks that we knew had an effect and launched the Way of working in a 1.0 version. Then we opened up for continuous development, engaging with the sales team on what is needed next.

Co-creation and leader-driven implementation

We engaged sales leaders in workshops to define and prioritise the processes, the supporting tools and practical examples to be included in Way of selling. Through a bootcamp, the leaders were prepared to introduce the concept to their team and start up the win room practice. We offered all the leaders on-site support.

The leaders were responsible for building the energy around the transformation, supported by top leadership communication, videos, success cases etc.

Practical and pragmatic implementation: develop in sprints – learn through cases and on the job training

We wanted to accelerate the learning and the changed behaviour. Therefore, we limited the classroom training and focused on real-life cases and simulations. We developed our tools through sprints and iterated along the way.

The sales representatives were encouraged to use the new supporting tools in customer interactions as soon as possible and share learnings through the win rooms. We set up tangible targets for behavioural effects and business impact, which were measured already during the implementation.