Industry: Financial Services
Revenues: over $100 million
Location: Redmond, WA

This financial services company is a second generation family-owned business that grew to dominate an industry niche in the direct consumer sale of financial services products. Their market is primarily working through the leading unions, trade associations, and organizations across North America. The company is comprised of a team of over 400 professional agents across North America – both the US and Canada.

The Business Situation
After an extended season of revenue and geographic growth, the company found itself with flattened revenues and high sales force turnover. As one of the largest customers of Monster.com employment candidate leads, the client decided to tackle the problem of recruiting, training & retention of their sales force.

The OneAccord Solution
After an initial study engagement where OneAccord assessed all facets of sales, sales management & sales related human resource activity, the client decided to first address the training of new sales personnel.

OneAccord first assessed the current training program, including the expectations set during the candidate recruiting phase, on through candidates’ release into the sales field following training.

OneAccord proposed several initiatives to improve the overall training program, including:

• Pre-employment recruiting discussions about the actual nature of the practical work involved in the sales position were added during the candidate interview phase.
• Pre-training expectations were set accurately – the intensity of the experience was shared proactively with employment candidates.
• Candidates were both stretched and encouraged to share their experiences openly with each other and with the company, creating a strong camaraderie among the members of each training class.
• Significant training program components were modified to improve their effectiveness and retention.
• Candidate release from training into the field was also significantly changed, to help improve effectiveness once the new sales team entered the field.

Results
Candidate feed back about the training experience was much stronger than ever before, with the roots of company loyalty being proactively communicated by the successful new sales classes. Management has recognized that these newest trainees have entered production quicker, been more successful, and been retained much longer than their peers from earlier training seasons.

According to the CFO, each 5% gain in retention is worth several million dollars to the bottom line. Post-training retention of employees rose a staggering 40% over previous levels

“We were very impressed by their (OA) ability to bring together industry best practices in conjunction with practical applications”.

“OneAccord coordinated the project involving numerous people and the ability to work collaboratively while guiding the project quickly and effectively was outstanding”.