BT Enterprise

The Challenge

BT’s Enterprise business is operating in a fast-changing context, with increasing challenges and opportunities emerging from both established and new competitors. They have followed a proven sales methodology and invested in L&D for their salespeople to adopt and implement this methodology. However, in this dynamic environment, salespeople need to think differently about how to approach customers, needing to adopt a more insight-based, consultative selling methodology. To understand the gap between current state and future demand and to identify the best fitting solution, BT Enterprise required accurate people data and insight about its sales members’ capabilities, motivation, and potential. At an individual level to support ongoing self-development and increase a sense of personal ownership and accountability, providing the unit with actionable insights to meet personal goals as well as future business needs. And at an organizational level to collect deeper insight into the collective strengths and development areas of BT’s salespeople, allowing them to take a more bespoke and individualized approach to development planning and provide their sales organization with the necessary insight to support decision making around future talent planning, recruitment, and L&D activities.

The Solution

SHL and BT’s Enterprise business partnered together to deliver a Talent Review of BT Enterprises sales organization, by means of administering psychometric assessments, providing individual insight and creating an aggregate view of the Enterprise sales function.

900 sales representatives have completed SHL’s Occupational Personality Questionnaire (OPQ) alongside the Motivational Questionnaire (MQ), measuring them against SHL’s new (2021) Sales Transformation framework and generating personalized feedback reports to help individuals understand their key drivers and development areas at work, and how their natural behavioral preferences align to key competencies that are proven to drive sales performance.

Aggregate insights were presented through a dashboard to allow BT to filter and review its community of sellers, aligned to different areas within their business.

SHL also supported BT Enterprise via aggregate data analysis, including correlating assessment results with on-the-job performance data and comparing BT assessment data to external competitor benchmarks, to create a comprehensive picture of the profile of the sales community within BT Enterprise today.

The Results

Understanding people data is helpful for building a successful Enterprise sales strategy. The talent insight that SHL provided helped BT to understand the collective strengths and gaps of their people, enabling them to adopt a more focused and tailored development strategy closely aligned to existing development needs and areas of potential, for both individuals and specific areas of business.

Comparing BT Enterprise assessment insights to that of its competitors has allowed BT to align its talent strategy with overall business strategy and ultimately, to obtain competitive advantage.

Aggregate talent analysis revealed that BT sellers who scored highly on SHL’s overall Sales Transformation framework, were 2 times as likely to be amongst BT’s highest achieving sales performers, specifically delivering the highest sales order values.

A deeper dive revealed that the strongest performing BT sellers were 2 times as likely to Drive Personalization and Value Creation for customers, as well as being more agile, adaptable, and resilient in terms of their behavioral profile. They were also 15% more likely to have strengths in Commercial Analytics and Technology Adoption, which has become critical in today’s digitally driven selling environment.

Ultimately, knowing these insights about their sellers at an individual and group level has allowed the business to be more deliberate and targeted in its sales L&D offering as well as bringing clarity to how to evaluate candidates as they are considered for roles.