The Challenge
When employee-owned AVI Systems was looking to improve their business structure and take their sales teams to new heights, they needed to leverage their talent with processes, disciplines, and tools that could help them deliver quality solutions to their clients. In the sales organization, AVI was looking to create a formal sales process that could help their sales teams better manage their sales campaigns and pipeline. Beginning with an informal sales process, AVI began searching for ways to get better control of their sales campaigns, as well as proactively manage their company’s pipeline. The desired outcome was to create a highly predictable and more consistently accurate sales performance.
The Solution
AVI partnered with Baker Communications Inc. (BCI) in 2016 to support their sales and management training using BCI’s Pathways To Growth program. As a mid-sized company, AVI’s sales team initially viewed the Pathways to Growth sales management process as something more appropriate for larger corporations. However, not long after the first participants went through the program, the immense merit of following the disciplines became clear. In addition to creating a more predictable and accurate sales performances and forecasts, the process even motivated their sellers to be more productive.
Since AVI implemented the tools and disciplines from Pathways to Growth, they’ve been able to conduct more effective sales meetings and strategy sessions for all of their sales opportunities. They have been able to increase the accuracy and management of their forecast, their sales funnel, and their pipeline, as well as create better strategies to achieve their sales goals through the use of Sales Leading Indicators. Applying probability factors to their campaigns as they progressed through their sales funnel has helped to create a more precise, data-driven approach. In turn, the disciplines and tools inherent in Pathways to Growth made it easier to construct business development strategies to more systematically accomplish their goals. Since partnering with BCI and their Pathways to Growth program, AVI can now associate each milestone in their sales funnel with defined probability factor stages ranging from 0-100%, defining next steps, and achieve noticeable progress towards successfully completing those steps.
The Outcome
Now flash forward a few years to 2020. Most industries saw a significant impact from the Covid-19 pandemic. AVI was no exception. Their entire industry suffered a major collapse during the pandemic. But because AVI had been using the disciplines, processes, and tools in BCI’s Pathways to Growth, they were able to flatten the pandemic’s impact, while industry competitors experienced a 30- 40% shrinkage.
Don Mastro, VP of Sales at AVI, stated "I have believed in this program [Pathways To Growth] since our first cohort. There is nothing like this that I have experienced before in over 30 years of sales leadership in this industry."
Today, AVI has delivered Pathways to Growth to over 24 branches in the U.S. and has provided this training to their sales teams, as well as their sales managers and sales leadership. At AVI, they are constantly challenging their teams to achieve their full potential. BCI’s Pathways to Growth provides them with the methodology and key performance indicators to achieve that objective. Fast forward to 2021 year to date, and AVI has achieved 43% growth year over year through their first quarter due to continued focus on the Pathways to Growth program keeping sellers accountable and motivated through sustained coaching!
The Summary
Baker Communications congratulates AVI for successfully “weathering the pandemic storm” and for minimizing its business impact. World-class performance never happens by accident. Through training and process improvement, companies can transform and stabilize their entire organization.
According to the Sales Management Association (SMS), organizations that implement a formal sales process improve revenue, on average, by 18%. That same SMS study also pointed out that companies who spend 3 hours per month on pipeline management also improve revenues, on average, by 11%. Further, those organizations that train their sales managers on pipeline management can also improve revenue performance by another 9%.And finally, the SMS showed that organizations that followed all three of the best practices mentioned above, saw an average 28% increase in revenue versus those that did not. AVI Systems is an excellent example of implementing all three practices, and as a result, they minimized the impact of the 2020 pandemic.