Case Study - Induction

Background

Working within a large financial organisation, a need was identified to recruit a large number of high performing front-line sales people. Historically, front-line sales people had been promoted from the established service teams based on their propensity to deliver a good customer service. We needed to challenge this approach and design a programme which would ensure these people performed at a high level very quickly.

Purpose and Objectives

Our objectives were to develop an induction programme for front-line sales staff, which covered intermediate service and sales techniques in addition to procedural, technical, legal and regulatory standards.

Stage One

A period of research and needs analysis was undertaken. This involved spending time with the Business Sponsor to define what their requirements were (including the Critical Success Factors and objectives) to ensure that anything designed would deliver these outcomes.

The Critical Success Factors identified were as follows:

1. Deliver specific sales results in four key areas (savings, mortgage leads, consumer lending and life assurance conversions);

2. Complete internal technical training courses within 2 weeks;

3. 80% Retention of staff following the first year.

The research also included attendees of the current induction programme and attendees who had recently attended sales training to establish the strengths and weaknesses of the current approach. Some of the findings were:

• Induction period was too long – there was to much information to take on board in one go;
• There was a lack of support in the workplace;
• The training was not personalised and it felt like a ‘sheep-dip’;
• Attendees did not immediately perform against sales targets – it took on average 2 months to begin to achieve the challenging targets set;
• Specific sessions (in both Induction and sales training) were praised and criticized for various reasons.

The full findings were reported to the Business Sponsor and a recommended approach was agreed.

Stage Two

The second stage of the project was to design the programme . A six week period was agreed in which to deliver the key elements. It was decided to structure the programme with a ‘week on/week off’ approach balancing face to face training events with workplace placements and mentoring. This would address the issues of lack of support and too much information being delivered in too short space of time. Mentors were selected from criteria balancing both performance and behaviours . Detailed Group Leaders Guides were produced for each face to face event, which were signed off by the Business Sponsor. We utilised existing computer based material for technical systems and regulatory requirements, which had previously been agreed and signed off.

Stage Three

The programme was then piloted with a group of 10 new inductees. The recruitment process had been reviewed to provide feedback on each delegate, which personalised the programme for each delegate by addressing their individual learning needs.

The programme was structured in the following way:

Week One:

• Introduction to the bank and the training plan (including meeting with line manager and mentor);
• Roles and responsibilities (including code of conduct, behaviours, performance management expectations, etc.);
• Basics of service and sales.

Week Two:

• Computer based systems training;
• Legal and regulatory paper based training (e.g. Financial Services Act, Data Protection Act);
• Work-based tasks and assignments.

Week Three:

• Review of learning;
• Service and Sales principles and practice (e.g. buying sequence and spotting opportunities);
• Work based tasks and assignments.

Week Four:

• Review of learning;
• Additional computer based systems training;
• Additional service and sales principle and practice (overcoming objections and presenting benefit statements);
• Additional regulatory and legal requirements (e.g. money laundering).

Week Five:

• Work based practice in live environment with support of mentor.

Week Six:

• Final service and sales skills practice;
• Accreditation.

Outcomes

Evaluation was carried out at three distinct levels as follows:

Level One – Each learning event was evaluated via a questionnaire to establish learning gained and the effectiveness of the delivery method.

Level Two – The inductee’s progress was monitored by their Mentor and a structured feedback form was developed to record any developmental issues which could be addressed by the Mentor themselves or by one of the training solutions.

Level Three - Sales results were monitored after an initial 3 month period, which was agreed by the Business Sponsor to allow the inductees to embed their learning. The findings were as follows:

Savings

Target - £10,000 of new savings per delegate per week

Actual - £14,300 average per delegate per week

Mortgage leads

Target – 2 leads per delegate per day (50% conversion)

Actual – 3 leads per delegate per day (76% conversion)

Consumer lending

Target - £5,000 of lending products per day

Actual - £6,200 of lending products per day

Life assurance conversions

Target – 30%

Actual – 34%

From this information, it was relatively straight forward to convert this into real figures/profit for the business. Additionally, the delegate attrition figure indicated after 6 months that 1 delegate had left the programme, providing a 90% retention of staff figure. If one member of staff costs (£2500 on average) to recruit and train, this would be a significant saving to the organization.

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