TurningPoint® Case Study

Sherwin-Williams

BACKGROUND

Chuck Mengel is the Training Manager for Sherwin-Williams' Sales Excellence team supporting 1,900 field sales representatives. He works for the Stores Group, the largest of Sherwin's three divisions that also includes Global and Consumer Groups. In his training role, Chuck oversees the company's diverse training methods that include self-paced, interactive, face-to-face training, as well as paper-, video-, and audio-based training.

When Chuck joined Sales Excellence, his primary goal was to bring consistency to the sales process across the Stores Group. After an introduction to TurningPoint audience response systems, Chuck established a strategic partnership with Turning Technologies to help reinforce the existing Seven-Step Sales Process for the entire Sherwin-Williams sales team.

THE CHALLENGE

For any company, hosting a successful national sales conference is always a vast undertaking. For Sherwin-Williams, and particularly, Chuck and Tim DiVito, the point person from Turning Technologies, the January event in Dallas was no exception. By the end of training, nearly 1,900 salespeople walked away with a better understanding of the company's Seven-Step Sales Process.

THE SOLUTION

After securing the rental of approximately 1,700 ResponseCards® from Turning Technologies, Chuck, his co-worker John, Tim and a handful of assistants conducted a two-day Train-the-Trainer session prior to the sales meeting to give conference session facilitators and Masters of Ceremonies time to develop their interactive presentations to avoid any major glitches on the day of the event. The conference certainly kept everyone on their feet – Turning Technologies alone had 14 technicians on hand to help run this unique training event.

The previous September, Sherwin-Williams used 150 ResponseCards that the company had purchased for a meeting on coaching, which actually inspired the national sales event. The company wanted to go beyond the "had a nice time" evaluations it usually received from attendees after training events. So trainers turned to TurningPoint and ResponseCards to capture and quantify the actual learning that took place at their four training centers.

When Sherwin-Williams saw the positive results of these early efforts, everyone agreed that TurningPoint would be the perfect tool for reinforcing the Seven-Step Sales Process at the National Sales Conference.

Prior to the event, all sales personnel were made aware of the quiz-based training session that was going to take place on the Seven Steps. The quiz questions would be based on their knowledge and understanding. So they were encouraged to review the Seven Step materials in advance of the session. For the 14 separate sessions that occurred during the conference, sales teams of 80 to 260 people were created based on their geographic sales areas. Each individual on the team was given a ResponseCard. Each geographic team competed by their number of correct responses to 40 questions. At each 10-question interval, teams received feedback on how they ranked relative to their competitors. Because the teams were comprised of different numbers of people, team scores were weighted accordingly. Members of the winning team won a lapel pin and bragging rights. But most importantly, the event encouraged participation through friendly competition, which led to the type of learning Sherwin-Williams was ultimately seeking.

CONCLUSION

Chuck says that the final feedback was upbeat, and people were excited about what audience response technology could accomplish in a short span of time. Chuck says that the purchasing decision never encountered objections. TurningPoint has already been used 17 times this year, and there are no plans for slowing down its use. With new hires, there is an ever-present need to train people. Being able to turn to an enthusiastically received system is a great way to get sales people up to speed quickly while assuring the appropriate level of learning occurs.

For more information about purchasing Turning Technologies' audience response systems for your organization, contact us at 866-746-3015.