Weir
At Weir Group PLC, the future is now. As one of the world’s leading engineering businesses, Weir is on a mission to make its customers’ mining and infrastructure operations more sustainable and efficient. Weir’s innovative technology enables critical resources to be produced with less energy, water and waste—driving customer value, supporting economic development and accelerating carbon transition.
Results at a glance
- 25% faster sales cycles
- 21% increase in revenue
- 25% improvement in adjusted operating profit
The Challenge
Weir Minerals’ Europe and METCA divisions saw tremendous growth potential in their market. Everyone from sales to service engineers to HR was eager to capitalize.
However, without a common approach and a reliable way to manage conversations with prospects and customers, customer-facing teams struggled to uncover pressing business concerns and link these issues to the unique value of their solutions. As a result, Weir’s close rates suffered, and teams were wasting precious selling time on unwinnable opportunities.
Leadership recognized the need to transform from a features and functionality mindset to one rooted in value. They needed a proven way to determine what customers truly valued, drive consistency in the sales process and improve the customer experience.
Business issues
- Improve close rates
- Get closer to the customer to determine what they truly value
- Equip all customer-facing roles to have high-level business conversations, in the office or in the field
We are growing faster than our markets, strengthening margins and cash and reducing our CO2 footprint.
The Solution
In 2021, Weir’s leadership implemented the ValueSelling Framework® with a structured rollout across all Europe and METCA teams, including:
- Five customized training programs for more than 100 salespeople and service engineers
- Follow-up sessions and coaching
- eLearning, online training and consulting on objection-handling
- Skill-building programs for nurturing effective customer relationships
Setting themselves apart from others in the industry, Weir recognized the strategic advantage of equipping service engineers with the same methodology as sales. Weir knew that equipping these individuals with the right conversational framework would enable them to gather tremendous insight into what customers value.
Instead of separating teams during training, Weir strategically mixed the groups to include varying roles and seniority levels—enabling the diverse groups to learn from each other and helping geographically-distributed teams rally around a common goal.
The Results
Weir’s customer-facing teams immediately saw the power of a shared sales methodology:
- 93% agreed/strongly agreed that the training advanced their customer-facing skills
- 100% agreed/strongly agreed that the materials will be an ongoing resource
- 100% agreed/strongly agreed that they possessed strong knowledge of value-based selling concepts post-training
As a result, Weir outgrew its markets and delivered significant year-on-year growth in revenue, profit and cash generation in 2022. Most importantly, there is a renewed sense of confidence among teams: Service engineers bring the voice of the customer into product development; early-career sellers feel equipped to navigate any business conversation; and veteran sellers have embraced the new framework to help them organize best practices learned over their careers.
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