Training delivers higher sales for Pitney Bowes: Revenues, productivity and order values improve at franking and mailstream company

摘要

Purpose: Describes how sales training for six key employees improved performance at franking and mailstream company Pitney Bowes. Design/methodology/approach: Examines the reasons for the training, the form it took and the success it has achieved. Findings: Reveals that a training-needs analysis highlighted the need for the training to improve: product knowledge; marketplace knowledge; customer-applications knowledge; questioning skills; proposal-generation skills; business-planning skills; and vertical marketing knowledge. Practical implications: Details how the course improved revenue, the value of the average order and the number of orders per head. Social implications: Describes how the market in which the company operates had undergone significant changes, with deregulation of the UK postal market and Royal Mail's new postal-price structure driving consumers to review how they communicate with their customers. Originality/value: Reveals how the training helped to change the perception of the company from being one that purely dealt with franking machines to one that offered broad expertise in a multi-solution, mailstream world.