Waking Up A Sales Team In Surinam

The Situation
The sales team responsible for marketing and selling a top global beer in this South American country had 90% of their market share. Although it was obvious to the home office that the only possibility was decline in this emerging country, the culture in the team ranged from “we’re invincible” to “no problem, man!” The new General Manager saw the threat from new competition as well as the lack of discipline throughout the business.

For example there were plans to make television commercials, but they just didn’t get around to making them. When deliveries were made, invoices were presented but drivers had a “not my job” mentality about collecting payment so receivables were months behind.

Our Work 
In our initial planning work with the team, the first major issue to surface was the antagonism between parts of the business. The production team believed they were doing the real work and that sales had the easy job — even though the labels on their bottles were sloppily applied.

But the biggest job was to tackle the limiting cultural beliefs that drove the entire business. Although difficult to imagine that We are invincible could be a limiting paradigm in any sales team, that’s what it was. Once they realized how inadequate their approach had been, they became a team committed to doing the impossible.
They targeted to beating their target of 8% growth in volume produced – no matter what. They published their plan in the in-house magazine, making promises to the whole business and then delivering them.

The team understood and followed the entire system we had taught them, using every component to track and improve performance on their plan.

The Results
By the end of the year, they had surpassed their key target and achieved their highest result for 14 years. The team was working together in a cooperative and enthusiastic way they could not have imagined 12 months before. They were winning!

They started marketing aggressively in the country and soon felt able to guarantee their results to the home office.

And the production team? They liked what they saw and decided to follow the same program in the next year.