Case Study
Division of a $138B Telecommunications Services Provider Implements Hunter-Farmer Strategy, Significantly Increasing Revenue/Share Price, Maximizing Divestiture
$19M+
First-Year Incremental Revenue Increase
Strategic Imperative
To increase total sales by 30% and improve service unit cost performance by 25% through the development, testing, and implementation of a tailored hunter-farmer revenue capture model across nationwide sales and service centers, addressing operating model infrastructure weaknesses to strengthen sales, unit-cost and margin results, and service effectiveness
Client Background
- National telecommunications business operated 20 best-in-class call centers supporting sales and service, most added through acquisition
- Scope covered nationwide sales and service centers responsible for revenue capture, customer support, and representative performance
- Operating complexity required coordinated sales conversion, service capacity, scheduling, utilization, coaching, and performance management
- Business had delivered steady sales growth for ten years before growth slowed over the previous two years
- Leadership recognized past performance would not sustain future success and urgently sought stronger growth, margin, and service effectiveness
- Less than 36% of representatives achieved monthly sales quotas, while center productivity remained at 50%–60% of reasonable expectations
Key Issues & Barriers
- Supervisors lacked coaching skills to address representative weaknesses and consistently improve individual sales and service performance
- Performance reviews were minimally structured around expectations and variance causes, producing inconsistent feedback and ineffective corrective action
- Inefficient scheduling reduced representative availability and constrained productive customer-facing time across centers
- Limited data availability weakened visibility into productivity, utilization, conversion, and service performance trends
- Ingrained behaviors left only half of the average representative’s day available for customer interaction
- Operating model infrastructure weaknesses prevented consistent improvement in sales, unit-cost and margin performance, and service effectiveness
Key Implementation Components
- Developed, tested, and implemented a tailored hunter-farmer model with clear expectations and metrics for sales, service, productivity, and utilization
- Enhanced reporting with trend graphing to improve visualization of performance trends and emerging variances
- Developed expert models incorporating proven competencies and best practices for critical sales and service roles
- Redesigned the sales manager role to emphasize comprehensive team development, coaching, and representative performance improvement
- Implemented structured results reviews to examine performance variances, assign corrective actions, and sustain continuous improvement
- Developed and implemented capacity planning and forecasting models to optimize staffing, resource allocation, and center performance
Benefits & Results
$19M+
First-Year Incremental Revenue Increase
29%
Lines Sold per Hour Increase
16%
Service Calls per Hour Increase
12%
Sales Conversion Rate Improvement
27%
Service Representative Utilization Improvement