All over the globe, talent development professionals work every day to help create a world that works better. They do this by developing the knowledge, skills, and abilities of others. Each year, the ATD Excellence in Practice Awards celebrate the efforts of individuals and organizations whose commitment to excellence sets them apart.

The ATD Excellence in Practice Award for sales enablement is presented to practices that foster and enable world-class sales competencies and standards that guide and empower sales leaders and sales training professionals to develop the next generation of sales people. China Telecom is one of the most recent winners of this award.

Challenge

A core need of companies in the saturated field of broadcasting and telecommunications is to motivate sales staff. Through its 21 Days Action Learning program, China Telecom helped sales teams improve knowledge, skills, and motivation.

Solution

For organizations looking to incorporate these best practices of sales enablement into their teams, China Telecom recommends an innovative method: incorporating traditional face-to-face training with on-the-job training.

After two-day courses and 21-day real-life practice of three phases—preparation, customer visiting, and case review—coaches accompanied the trainees to visit customers for shadowing opportunities. These courses focused on marketing skills and targeting sales challenges.

The program featured the integration between training and practice in real life to increase sales performance. This practice helped trainees transform the training information into behavioral habits—changing the mindset from “knowing it” to “doing it.”

Results

China Telecom leaders saw the achievements and confirmed the process and resource allocation of the new practice by issuing administrative documents. Over the last five years, this program covered 13,000 trainees, signed 18,000 orders, and increased the income of new business by $225.5 million from 2014 to August 2017. Employee satisfaction also increased.

Thus, China Telecom was able to achieve its larger goal of changing the mindset of its salespeople to one where trainees adopt a customer-first approach. They also used the Kirkpatrick Model to evaluate the whole practice on the reaction level, learning level, and behavior level.

Want to learn about more best practice sales enablement solutions? Check out these ATD Excellence in Practice Award winners.