CASE STUDIES

The Challenge:

In 2001 the Vice President of Ad Sales for Google was looking to groom his leaders into a world-class sales management organization, producing world-class sales revenue.

For the Advertising Sales Team, customer demand was off the charts and many times out-stripped the team’s available time to respond. As is typical of start-ups, they did a lot with a little. The sales organization was made up of three functional areas: management, sales and operations. While sales and operations reported up different chains of command, they were expected to work as a united team in building the business. Disconnects often existed in reaching this goal due to the functional reporting structure. Additionally, challenges existed with management of the regional offices as relatively new managers were quickly put in charge of leading large groups of employees responsible for huge revenue centers. Immediate needs existed in building new managers into strong leaders who were effective at planning growth strategies, implementing specific plans of actions and effectively communicating vision across large groups of people and across different functions. All of these changes had to be addressed in an environment where continuous training on new products and services were required to effectively sell and service customers.

The Solution:

In 2001 Tim Armstrong, then VP North American Advertising Sales, sought us out as partners to help the organization evolve and scale to meet business objectives. Google Direct Sales was an organization of about fifty people at the time.

In order to be effective, we needed to work with all parts of the organization, from top executives down to the functional team manager and team member level to ensure consistency of leadership, execution and communication.

Our tool kit included leadership coaching, facilitation of execution process and business strategy consulting. Our work with Google provided critical structure and a platform employees:
– Learn how to effectively collaborate
– Create a planning framework for achieving objectives
– Focus on longer term strategy while achieving short-term results
– Clearly communicate ideas and expectations internally and externally
– Clarify desired outcomes
– Devise better ways of utilizing people’s talents

Key Results:

Between 2001–2008 we worked with Tim and his executive team, as well as more than 15 sales teams from New York to California. Members came to agree on what they were working toward and what they were going to do to achieve it. We helped them set overarching goals that propelled their incredible success. As one person said it, “You helped us focus and figure out the right strategy and tactics to execute, delivering the business impact we were looking for.” We worked with teams on clarifying these tactics and agreeing on team and individual accountability.

During the time we worked with Google, the company grew from a 500-person company to more than 20,000 employees. Individual teams we worked with on average quadrupled in size. The revenue produced from the teams we coached grew as much as 200x greater than when we started, with many team producing in excess of $100 million and outpacing overall company growth. Equally important, a cultural foundation was created to build trust and consistent communication enabling teams to figure out how to succeed in a business environment of constant change.