The Challenge
Ingersoll Rand is a $12 billion global diversified industrial firm that provides a wide range of innovative products, including complete air compressor systems, air conditioning systems, tools, ARO pumps, material handling systems and more. Its wide range of products provide a number of solutions to its customers, from enhancing the quality and comfort of air in homes and buildings to transporting and protecting food and perishables. It continues to lead the way in the market through an impressive portfolio of market-leading brands, which include Club Car, Ingersoll Rand, Thermo King and Trane.
But Ingersoll Rand has a larger vision that drives the culture of the company. It strives to “lead the way in solutions that make everyday living healthier, more energy efficient, more comfortable and more productive.” The company is driven by a 100-year-old tradition of technological innovation and enables its customers to positively affect the world. It’s committed to sustainability and having a positive global impact.
To constantly inspire progress, innovate positive solutions, and unleash the potential in employees, along with the customers, Ingersoll Rand relies on a culture of learning.
For years, Ingersoll-Rand has been focused on driving learning and growth across its corporate culture. In 2003, it established Ingersoll Rand University to support the development of leaders and staff through strategic competencies and a single pervasive culture. Some of the many programs offered include:
The Opportunity
While Ingersoll Rand made learning a predominant feature of its culture, like so many other companies, it needed help establishing a consistent methodology and process for its sales management teams. Because of an inconsistent sales management process and multiple pipeline tools from business unit to business unit, Ingersoll Rand’s sales management team was struggling to set standard practices. Sales representatives focused on driving sales excellence but found themselves impeded by a fragmented sales management culture.
“On the surface, those of us who are not in this latest generation of the workforce tend to think about selling and sales in much the same way it has traditionally been seen for many generations,” says Melissa Nelson Tate, Enterprise Director of Sales Excellence. “If we take a step back and look at how buying behavior has changed, we see a different playing field. Buyers have all the information they need at their fingertips. Think about how you buy for yourself today either personally or in your position. Technology has added an incredible dimension to buying and that dimension compounds the work of the seller, for developing sales people and accelerating their learning curve has become more important than ever.”
She explains that sales leaders have to be ready to put on their coaching caps to harness the potential and to realize the performance available to their team. “It's a much, much different space to operate in today than it has been for the last several decades,” she says.
The Approach
Ingersoll Rand selected the Pathways to Growth Sales Management System (PTG), which is a series of nine sales management disciplines, authored by Tony Robbins and Walter Rogers. Partnering with Ingersoll Rand’s Sales Excellence Division, the Ingersoll Rand and Baker Communications teams collaborated to customize PTG to meet their specific requirements, and a single Global Sales Management Standard called IRSMX was created. This standard then served as the template from which each business unit was allowed to customize in order to meet its business unit requirements, without altering the integrity of the overall system. In fact, the company took its commitment to the program so seriously and believes so heartily in its effectiveness that it mandated IRSMX be used across the entire company.
As the system was being implemented globally, BCI suggested that Ingersoll Rand consider using salesforce.com as the system of record to enable IRSMX. With support from BCI, Ingersoll Rand selected the CRM leader to standardize the ISRMX process and reporting and to support the global initiative. IRSMX is now further accelerated with the use of salesforce.com as it be being rolled out globally.
The implementation spanned multiple geographical and cultural environments, requiring customized content and coaching to address both internal and external cultural diversity associated with business units located around the world. Altogether, this project will impact more than 7,000 sellers and managers over time across North America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia.
Due to the scale of the project and Ingersoll Rand's desire to accelerate adoption of IRSMX across various business units, global delivery was accomplished through a joint effort between BCI Master Coaches and BCI-certified Ingersoll Rand business unit Master Coaches, with both groups leading IRSMX workshops and IRSMX coaching cadences. Ingersoll Rand continues to leverage BCI Senior Master Coaches for IRSMX delivery and on-demand support, including coaching, content changes, and specialized delivery needs.
The Results
Ingersoll Rand’s desire to make IRSMX a part of all its business units’ operations has led to faster-than-expected adoption of the methodology and substantial business results, while ensuring a high level of pipeline hygiene, forecast accuracy, and regular one-on-one coaching sessions between sales managers and sales representatives. It also found that the switch to SFDC has been an incalculable benefit as the company uses it to track, communicate and report on the health of the business.
Through the determination and desire shown by Ingersoll Rand’s Sales Excellence division to make the IRSMX method a part of its core sales management culture, it will succeed in reaching the end goal of rolling out IRSMX to every sales manager.
“Through the areas of strong sales leadership that we have in Ingersoll Rand, we have consistently seen improvement in engagement scores where teams have a focus on strong and improved sales leadership and coaching practices,” says Nelson Tate. Sales professionals describe their time with management and as a team as important to each member’s success.
An unexpected result is that sales leaders have a better work life balance. “[Sales leaders] have seen that they can more proactively, strategically, effectively lead their teams to greater performance by actually putting in less direct hours in a day. Of course, all of this improves retention and we know how costly it is to have poor performers. Those are some of the softer results we're seeing,” Nelson Tate says.
“On the quantitative side, we definitely are seeing cleaner pipelines, better forecast accuracy, improved win rates,” she says. “We're getting bigger pipelines, better deals at the table and winning more of those deals, which, of course, drive revenue improvement and then translate to market share gains.”