Suntory Oceania sales training

Over 300 sales reps operate in 14 territories across Australia and New Zealand.

These reps visit up to 30 small business customers each day. They’re well incentivised to maximise orders from these customers, but when David first spoke with Inspire Group, it was common for the reps to be ‘order takers’ rather than ‘value makers’.

They rarely seized the opportunity to cross-sell and up-sell, nor were they building the sort of strong relationships with store owners that would give them an edge over competitors.

Frucor had also recently been acquired by Japanese multinational beverage company Suntory. The new business, now Suntory Oceania, had new strategic imperatives. Sales reps were expected to shift from being 'order takers' to 'value makers' – trusted drinks experts advising small businesses on the beverage market, helping them make sodas and energy drinks a more profitable part of their business.

The partnership is marked by close collaboration, and a willingness to challenge each other to push beyond the status quo. Inspire Group designs sales training programmes using a three-step approach.

• Collaborative design session. This brings together all stakeholders to explore challenges and learning needs and define how success will be measured.

• High-level design document. This outlines the insights captured in the Co-Design session, documents deliverables and the learning architecture for the programme.

• Design, delivery and logistics. Maps out design and delivery phases, responsibilities, key milestones and delivery dates. Deliverables are designed in agile sprints.

The new Exceller8 sales training performance programme has six parts.

1. Six eLearning modules.

2. Six podcasts.

3. Two virtual peer-to-peer learning conferences.

4. Yatte Minahare progression programme.

5. A social community for sales reps to share learnings.

6. A landing page hub for all sales learning content.

A few years ago, the interactivity of eLearning was a welcome relief for sales professionals bored by interminable slide decks. But eLearning has become standard, and familiarity can decrease eLearning’s effectiveness as a learning tool.

Inspire Group met that challenge by innovating a richer learning ecosystem, from videos to podcasts and games, to reflect the diverse ways people like to learn in their own time. They also created a more relevant learning ecosystem by using real life scenarios that learners recognise and respect.

Diversity and inclusion

It was also important to represent the diversity of their customers. The previous Exceller8 sales course represented their customer personas as birds. Inspire Group evolved this into real people. Store owners included an Australian, a Kiwi, a recent immigrant from Argentina and a non-binary person, all aligned to Suntory Oceania customer personas.

Giving customer personas names and back stories made them more compelling and created empathy to help sales reps build better customer relationships.

Podcasts for on-the-road learning

This innovation was driven by the insight that, for sales reps, their car is their office. The time spent driving between sales appointments is the perfect opportunity to listen to an entertaining, bite-size chunk of learning.

To make the podcast more than passive listening, Inspire Group created ad breaks between each segment, with calls to action encouraging sales reps to implement their learnings immediately. This brought learning best practice to life in an audio format.

Reps enjoyed digestible chunks of learning followed by an activity and reported putting their learnings into practice faster in the field.

The overall impact of the new Exceller8 sales training programme has been to elevate the culture and the performance of the Suntory Oceania sales team in Australia and New Zealand. When it comes to the three key success KPIs established for the programme, Suntory Oceania have seen ROI in all three areas.

1. Sales results have improved 15% since the programme was rolled out.
2. Retention of sales staff has improved 60%, falling from 30% turnover to 12%.
3. Sales skills have improved from 5 to 7.58.

“One of the big things from sales reps, is they like that Exceller8 is adapted to all learning styles. I got a message from a new rep saying, ‘I love this program. I don't have to read every word. I can hear the characters talking.’ And reps appreciate the real-life scenarios and relatable customer characters. For example, we’ve an interaction with Ivan, and English isn't his first language. So, his dialogue isn’t perfect, and you get the sense conversation is difficult because there's a bit of a language barrier. That's what our sales reps deal with day-to-day.”

One big takeaway from this programme is to think outside the computer. eLearning is at risk of becoming as predictable and one-dimensional as a PowerPoint deck. Multi-layered sales programmes are more effective, not only because they’re more engaging, but also because they provide access for all learners, including the neurodiverse.

The success of this programme comes down to Suntory Oceania and Inspire Group’s willingness to push boundaries, invest in innovative content like podcasts, create opportunities for peer-to-peer learning, celebrate learners and subject matter experts, and make learning content relevant with realistic scenarios learners encounter every day.