Leader in Hearing Devices Achieves Record Sales
How hearing-aid company successfully launched a higher-priced product and created patient trust.
Challenge: Launch an impressive new hearing aid product, far superior to anything on the market, but with a higher price, despite the unskilled sales team.
A global manufacturer and retailer of hearing devices called on WCW to help increase sales, profitability and market share. With higher aspirations for a business that was mired in 6th place in the U.S. market, this European-based company would soon introduce a high-end digital device that was head and shoulders above anything in the marketplace. However, the price reflected its impressive features. In addition, the company had another hurdle to jump: many of the hearing experts in its retail centers were poor salespeople.
Solution: Sales training and service that was client/patient centered and able to be implemented throughout retail outlets.
WCW developed a comprehensive and consistent sales methodology and training process that was customer and patient centered. WCW led a 2½-day planning and team-building session with the company’s VP of Sales and top sales managers to establish a sales strategy for aggressive growth, to improve the team’s planning skills and process, and to introduce a planning process and design that could be exported to the field via a national sales meeting.
We also built a retail sales and service training program that addressed basic selling skills appropriate to the industry’s healthcare professionals and dispensers. The one-day program was designed to be delivered by the regional directors and field training team. A coaching component supported new patient management and selling skills at a practical level.
In order to support key staff members as they practiced their new consulting roles as owners and managers, WCW developed a performance training and development process, which included a 2 ½-day training program with support tools and materials for field use. WCW provided ongoing coaching to the consultants over a one-year period and gave them process documentation tools to ensure consistency, effectiveness and institutional memory in the event of consultant transition.
Results: 3 consecutive years of record-breaking sales, a dramatic increase in client trust levels, and a top position in the marketplace.
The hearing device company achieved three consecutive years of record-breaking results, each year experiencing at least a 30-percent improvement over the previous year. The organization occupies the top position in the marketplace largely due to specific factors, which include: salespeople, audiologists, and dispensers are doing a better job of building trust and rapport with clients and patients, demonstrating the hearing device, and closing the sale; sales and training staff have more empathy for each other’s work and are collaborating more effectively; and consultants can leverage various methods to assist accounts – from financial to leadership to sales to marketing.
