Asales force is the lifeblood of any business. It follows, then, that enhancing the effectiveness of this entity is often a key imperative for senior managers. As the Asia Pacific head for sales performance at global consulting firm Mercer, Ralph Grimse spends much of his time advising companies on how best to achieve this. Below, he also discusses Mercer's regional partnership with sales training provider Miller Heiman.
What exactly does the sales performance division offer in terms of its services?
Our services range from helping an organisation design a sales force, to helping them figure out who to hire, and how those people should be deployed against various sets of customers. Through our alliance with Miller Heiman, we also advise on how to train a sales force.
How did the relationship with Miller Heiman come about?
In 2008, we sought to develop a more robust sales culture, so we went to market and looked at various sales training and methodology firms, among which we brought in Miller Heiman to train our consultants.
During the process, we realised that many of our clients were in the same situation as us, so we started to look at how we might take Miller Heiman's products externally. The key to this was figuring out how to combine them with our own core competencies pertaining to people - how to reward them, how to increase their performance. In 2010, we began taking a joint Mercer-Miller Heiman offering to market. And in 2011, we launched our relationship in Asia.