Thomson Reuters Sales Training Suite Improves Business Metrics and Culture

Thomson Reuters partnered with Digital Media Training to develop a customized, multi-tiered sales training and reinforcement program. The training suite combines both live and digital learning elements that enhance business metrics.

The training initiative was designed for the ‘Governance, Risk and Compliance’ business unit launched in January of 2011. The unit was the amalgamation of a series of acquired private businesses, including a software sales company, a subscription sales company, a data sales company and an eLearning enterprise. The companies each had different methodologies, forecasting tools and had been trained by different sales organizations.

Alex Wood, Head and Director of Sales for Banking and Securities, explains the initiative’s goal:

“Our challenge was training sales to multiple teams handling different products with different skill sets, who were selling predominately into the same market, the financial services sector, but not exclusively into that market. We had a bunch of different people that were from different walks of life and had developed different sales skills because of where they’d come from and what they had been trained in, who were selling to different targets. So we started on a very un-level playing field.”

Most improved system metrics, associated with DMT training, were increased activity and increased revenue. Additionally, first appointment metrics, per head, increased 40% — and business for the unit as a whole increased by 55%.

Wood also noted that in addition to enhanced metrics, the initiative helped instill a sense of shared purpose among the teams:

“The metrics increased, but the passion that came into the job increased, too. Everyone sort of felt that they could ignore the noise that was going on through this turbulence in the market that we sell into, and also, the internal turbulence that we were self-creating. Team cohesion improved. We had an identity, and that got a buzz going. And when salespeople get a buzz going, they pick up the phone, and when they pick up the phone they make appointments. They see clients and they send out proposals. And they close more sales.”

Thomson Reuters is represented by their PR firm, Airfoil PR Group.