Implementing a business leadership programme at IMI

Driving revenue growth with both new and existing customers is at the heart of global engineering company IMI plc’s business strategy, with a key growth lever being the effectiveness of its Sales & Business Development function.

Kiddy was engaged to provide IMI with an assessment of their existing bench strength and provide line managers with the information required to take action.

How did we help?

We worked with IMI to identify the key differentiators of successful Sales & BD people, reflecting the specific challenges faced by IMI as well as insights from Kiddy’s work with other leading organisations. We then developed a robust assessment approach – consisting of a unique business simulation to test these skills in IMI’s business context, combined with an interview and psychometric assessment.

IMI senior managers were then trained in the approach to enable them to co-assess with Kiddy consultants.  A series of one day Assessment & Development Centres were run globally – with individuals being drawn from the Sales & BD functions from across their five platform businesses.  Each participant received individual feedback and a report capturing the key strengths and development actions required for him or her to become high performers. Their managers received the same information.

What was the outcome?

The assessments identified some clear strengths existed in the function as a whole:

• IMI’s Sales & BD people were responsive to immediate customer needs and had good market knowledge. The assessments also confirmed that a significant capability gap needed to be closed to achieve the business performance targets:
• IMI’s Sales & BD people needed to be better at engaging with customers to uncover bigger opportunities

The assessments also identified that no significant differences existed between the five platform businesses. These outputs enabled targeted actions to be taken to Develop, Move, Promote and Recruit the Sales & BD people:

• Line managers were equipped to coach and develop skills where possible, and move to alternate roles or exit from the business where necessary
• Investment in skills training was targeted at the critical skills identified and at the individuals with potential to develop
• High potential individuals were fast tracked to more senior roles
• Changes in the approach to external recruitment were made, setting a minimum performance threshold for external hires