Client Stories > Demonstrating Sales Negotiations ROI in a Highly Competitive Market

Demonstrating Sales Negotiations ROI in a Highly Competitive Market

Demonstrating Sales Negotiations ROI Transportation Industry

Demonstrating a Return on Sales Negotiations for a Transportation Company

Client Case Study

Situation — Demonstrating Sales Negotiations ROI

With over $5 billion in annual revenues, Ryder is a world leader in supply chain and transportation management solutions.  The company’s 30,000 employees work with clients in three primarily business segments:

  1. Fleet Leasing and Maintenance
  2. Dedicated Contract Carriage
  3. Supply Chain Services.

The company completed a multi-year restructuring program that resulted in a more streamlined approach to every facet of its business.

Complications

Operating in a highly competitive market, the company’s organizational focus after the restructuring was growing top line sales, growing margin (particularly on national deals) and increasing customer retention.

A formal Negotiation Needs Analysis identified the following issues that impact Ryder’s ability to achieve their business goals:

  • More sophisticated buyers
  • Incomplete analysis and preparation for deals
  • Tendency to “shoot from the hip” rather than use a fact-based approach
  • A large “inventory” of legacy deals where value had been given away
  • No definition of a “Great Deal” for Ryder
  • Little autonomy by the field in closing deals
  • A good sales process in place but no formal organizational negotiation process
  • Cross-functional areas acting independently, each with its own goals and objectives (often at odds with achieving a “Great Deal” for Ryder)
  • Lack of training and process implementation and reinforcement

Approach

In order to address these key issues, we recommended to Ryder that rather than just run a series of training events, it implement a cross-functional, organization-wide Negotiation Solution which included sales negotiation training, sales coaching, and consulting.

Focusing on the “big picture” business results that Ryder was looking to achieve, the Ryder negotiation strategy was developed by gathering key representatives from the Executive Team, Sales Management, National Account Sales, Legal, Pricing, Human Resources, Finance and Marketing. The first step was to identify and agree on what measurable results would signify a successful initiative, and then develop the key actions to produce those results that included:

Approach (cont.)

  1. Strategic Sales Clarity
    Defining a common goal or organizational negotiation strategy linked to the company’s sales strategy
  2. Process
    Agreeing on a common negotiation process integrated with the sales process including:

    • A SWOT form for every deal over $500K
    • Collaboration meetings with Legal, Pricing, Credit, Lease Finance, and appropriate Senior Management will be held for every deal over $1,000,000 prior to an offer being submitted
    • Negotiation process language being incorporated in the scorecards of each Managing Director of Sales, Regional Director of Sales, Director of National Accounts, and Director of Business Development
    • Completing a Consequences of No Agreement “gap” analysis of value propositions before reacting to competitive pricing
    • Incorporating the methodology of Multiple Equal Offers in every proposal
    • Including Fuel and insurance in at least 1 MEO for every deal
    • Not agreeing to concessions but, rather, trading for something of greater or equal value
  3. Performance Coaching and Skill Building
    Skill development combined with coaching process implementation
  4. Impact and Accountability
    Measuring results and continuously improving

Results — Demonstrating Sales Negotiations ROI
In twelve months:

  • $13.4M in incremental revenue
  • $3.2M in incremental incremental operating profit
  • 109% increased average closing ratio
  • 17% margin improvement
  • 271.5% return on investment

Related Information

ServiceSource has relied on LSA Global’s expertise for a variety of core initiatives, from strategy design and implementation, to business sales skills, to sales coaching. We recently engaged LSA Global to create a competency matrix for our inside sales team that will serve as our roadmap for employee on-boarding, development, succession planning, and retention.

This critical project had a tight timeline with high visibility. LSA Global completed the deliverable ahead of schedule and surpassed our expectations.

PMO and Outside Sales Operations
Senior Vice President

Service Source

LSA Global’s sales negotiation training and assessment process provided the sales negotiation tools and practices that have significantly enhanced our negotiations process. Their facilitators understood our business, its challenges, and framed the learning in a way that we understood.

I am very happy with the value we have received and would highly recommend LSA to others looking to improve their sales negotiations results.

Jeff Bizzack
President

Service Source

LSA always delivers the right sales and sales management solutions to meet our unique needs. I especially appreciate their ability to deeply understand our business and our culture so that they can design the most valuable and impactful outcomes for us and our clients.

Sarah Parks
Senior Project Manager

Hyperion

LSA Global has been a great partner in helping us move toward being “the leading developer of talent in the service performance management industry.”

I have engaged LSA to help develop best-in-class programs in the areas of: Executive On-boarding, Manager Training, Sales Training and Coaching, Employee Engagement, and Instructional Design.

They have consistently met or exceeded my (very) high expectations and are always responsive to my needs to increase performance, engagement, customer satisfaction, and sales growth.

Mike Normant
Senior Director, Training & Development

Service Source

At the onset of our engagement with LSA, I was skeptical that an outside firm would be able to understand and dissect our organization’s highly complex and technical business challenges.

However, through the leadership team interview and strategy retreat processes that LSA utilized, they provided a fresh, innovative, and practical perspective that created tremendous strategic value and focus for our executive leadership team.

As a result, I would highly recommend LSA Global to any leader struggling with building the strategic alignment and high performance teams necessary to generate sales growth, in a way that fits their unique corporate culture.

Robert Laudati
Managing Director

L3Harris_Logo-LSAGlobal

LSA’s customized Effective Presentation Skills program has helped us elevate our presentation skills to the next level. I personally now have a much greater self-awareness of my presentation skills and can leverage my strengths while working to improve upon other areas.

I definitely recommend LSA Global to anyone for whom presentations are an integral part of their job.

Jim Elliott
Senior Marketing Manager

Samsung

LSA was instrumental in making our worldwide sales meeting a success. They saved me a ton of time with ‘best in class’ solutions to meet our business objectives. Whenever I’m in a pinch, I can count on LSA’s dynamic team of sales trainers and consultants to really go the extra mile.

They truly understand the meaning of customer delight.  Thank you!

Amy Walker
Manager

Seagate

The sales strategy and goal setting session was right on target. It was a very valuable process that I highly recommend to any sales team looking to increase performance.

Thank you LSA Global!

Phil Rosenberg
Senior Vice President of Sales

LSA is an excellent sales and leadership outsource partner! They listen to our needs, are responsive, and work at a pace that keeps up with our rapid speed.

We have found LSA to bring strategic, innovative, and practical solutions to meet our business priorities by partnering effectively with our key staff. I consider them to be an important external extension of our team.

Thank you!

Wendy Chinn
Sr. Director, Global Sales Enablement

We needed a way to improve customer training. We had to reach a disparate group of people in a very short period time. LSA gave us a new training methodology and a better way to go to market with our customer training that improved their experience and our brand positioning.

LSA delivered exactly what we needed and exceeded our expectations.  Thank you.

Hinda Chalew
Vice President of Marketing

We hired LSA to help align our sales strategy with our business strategy to sustain our hardware business while driving high growth in software and services. LSA’s ability to measure our level of strategic alignment, pinpoint areas of leverage, and get the entire executive sales team to agree upon what matters most exceeded our expectations.

I would recommend them to any sales leader who wants to drive sales performance.

Dan Dica
SVP Worldwide Sales

OneSpan_Logo-LSAGlobal

LSA’s introduction and continuous reinforcement of the MEDRAD objectives, vision, and mission were very impressive. The majority now understands and is openly able to verbalize these key items.

LSA did a wonderful job introducing the importance of sales coaching and reinforcement and was able to keep everyone focused.

Cindy Steffen
National Manager, Telesales

LSA has consistently delivered top notch value to Seagate’s Corporate University Program. The level of facilitator involvement and continuous program evolution has kept the sales negotiation training engaging, relevant, and impactful.

We look forward to working with LSA in the future.

Geoff Purnell
Sales Executive, Seagate Data Recovery Services

Seagate

From beginning to end, LSA was as invested in making sure the program succeeded as we were. They not only met the needs of our sales organization, but they helped us meet our very tight launch deadline.

The consultant operated with the sense of urgency necessary to ensure that we were ready to roll the business sales training program in a way that made sense.

Without their dedication and sales expertise we would not have been able to launch the program with the success that we did. Thank you LSA for being a valued business partner!

Erin Surprise
PHR, Manager - L & D

LSA is a great and high quality training and consulting resource. In less than a week turnaround time, they were able to design and deliver a ‘best in class’ inside sales solution to meet my team’s unique needs.

They definitely met my high expectations and were very responsive to my specific objectives.  Thank you!

Olivia Flach
Americas Retail Sales

Sandisk

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