Transforming Sales Managers into Business Leaders

Pitney Bowes was embarking on a series of change initiatives that promised to transform their sales organization. Enspire Learning helped Pitney Bowes by delivering a powerful leadership simulation customized to their performance objectives.

Challenge

Pitney Bowes, a Fortune 500 leader in mail processing solutions, faced a daunting challenge: How to create leaders that focus on long-term sustainable business development rather than on immediate sales quotas? The answer to this question was at the heart of Pitney Bowes continued success in the global marketplace of mail-processing solutions.

Solution

Using the Executive Challenge simulation as a capstone experience, Enspire Learning developed a transformative leadership training program that leveraged the power of experiential learning. Enspire developed its solution in partnership with a steering committee of senior Pitney Bowes executives, representing multiple product and service lines. To solve Pitney Bowes’ challenge, Enspire distilled key
learning objectives including:

  • General Management – Shifting leaders’ priorities from managing districts as sales offices to businesses with P&L responsibility. Looking at the long term sustainability of their businesses and the long term implications of short term decisions.
  • Communication – How to move from a culture focused on individual performance to a culture that thrives on coordination of strategic projects, shared best practices, and collaboration.
  • Solution Selling – Refocusing sales efforts from selling one-off products to suites of products and services packed as comprehensive solutions.

Enspire created a customized version of the Executive Challenge that modeled the Pitney Bowes product/service lines, key processes, and business culture. The solution was engineered to be performance-focused with a curriculum designed to create sustained meaningful change, not just a one-time experience.

The Enspire solution included the following components:

  • Experience Analysis – Enspire worked closely with stakeholders to determine critical-to-success factors that would build long term performance. Simulation metrics were aligned with Pitney Bowes’ performance goals.
  • Curriculum Development – Enspire integrated online and offline components such as prework assignments and job aids.
  • Experience Engineering –Enspire created a marketing program to excite participants and generate “buy in.”
  • Simulation Customization and Deployment – Enspire customized both content and functionality of the simulation to model the Pitney Bowes environment.
  • Evaluation and Follow-Up – In order to change long-term behavior, Enspire created job aids and other tools for participants to allow the simulation learning to become a part of the Pitney Bowes culture.
Delivery

Prior to the experience, Enspire created a training marketing campaign around the theme “The Right Stuff” to build excitement about the experience and set a tone of performance. Pre-work assignments complemented the marketing program. Ultimately, Enspire deployed the simulation itself to 125 regional directors and vice presidents placed on twelve teams. Each team ran a virtual geographic division of Pitney Bowes, The event culminated in a final debrief event with senior Pitney Bowes executives.

Outcome

Success depended on effective communication and strategy execution, cultivating customer relationships, taking measured risks, and developing a sustainable business model. A board of directors that included the President of Pitney Bowes’ $2.8 billion Global Mailstream Solutions division judged participant performance using criteria defined by Pitney Bowes’ balanced scorecard. The event was a tremendous success, not only in terms of executive and participant feedback, but also of ROI: A study by an independent consultancy showed that the program generated more than $600,000 in increased sales.