BTSR guidebook ~ Training & skills self-evaluation
Global Radio Masterclass
| Date: | December 07 – January 09 |
|---|---|
| Contact: | Sarah Smithard |
| Telephone: | 0116 2561308 |
Turning Stars into Superstars
In Autumn 2007, following the merger of the two
biggest commercial radio operators, and despite
a fusion of technology and infrastructure, the
Cultures and Station Teams remained to some
extent disparate and unconnected.
The national advertising market was showing early signs of downturn and it was apparent that the revenue generated by the 180 Account Managers based at our local stations would be of paramount importance to us in 2008.
We had a 45% churn of Sales staff and knew that putting a foot in the revolving door would pay revenue dividends. The two most common scenarios for staff churn were new recruits not passing probation or leaving due to poor performance within the first year and, at the other end of the scale, experienced, performing Salespeople, who left because they had no interest in progressing to Management, but perceived that they had stopped learning in their current roles and were therefore easy targets for rivals to court.
Masterclass, a fourteen-month, modular, action-based learning programme, was created to target the top 10% (eighteen delegates in the first year) of our Account Managers directly – that is, those who were most valuable to us and therefore most attractive to our competitors.
Masterclass had a number of objectives:
- To retain the top performers for at least another year
- To grow their skills and knowledge
- To grow their revenue by £1million
- To connect top performers from all over the country and create a peer group
- To create a network for sharing best practice
In the words of one of the delegates:
“From the outset there was an understanding that only the best would qualify – that in turn heightened the awareness that Masterclass was going to be like no other training programme!”
The programme was module-based, including:
Mastering Multimedia Platforms: a one-day launch, designed to bond the group in teams to produce results, and focus on our portfolio of brands.
Personal Discovery & Influence Mastery: a highly personal journey via the Insights Discovery Psychometric. Delegates gained a deeper understanding of their strengths and weaknesses in the sales and influence arena.
Strategic Marketing Mastery: a marketing degree in a day. High-level marketing strategy thinking and skills to take back to the local marketplace.
Stimulating Creativity: learning advanced creative skills, practising and looking for applications.
Alternative Attack, Presentation Mastery: delivering convincing, illuminating presentations in a confident manner using video and peer feedback.
Balancing Act: high end negotiation - how to take your influencing skills to a new level.
Closing the Gap: coaching and mentoring to continue the learning journey within Global Radio.
The content of each module was reviewed immediately prior to each session to ensure relevance, and topicality based on up-to-date market conditions.
Masterclassers were tasked with “Pass it On” tasks after each module to share the learning at their home stations.
The training programme lasted for fourteen months and was led by an internal team of four, in conjunction with Apex Training. The eighteen delegates were all selected from interview: fourteen of these graduated, three did not complete for personal or operational reasons, only one left the company.
Venues used spanned across the regions and London, further developing candidates’ understanding of our group, the diversity of brands and markets that we trade within.
The investment in Masterclass was £33,000.
“I found every one of the sessions stimulating and motivational. They were demanding … I was constantly being thrown out of my comfort zone and continuously challenged.”
The group of, essentially, strangers that came together in December 2007 formed a tight team from the start. With the exception of a Sales Leadership Programme, at this time all of our training workshops were offered to all Account Managers regardless of their experience level, but we saw the need to acknowledge our top performers and therefore establish them as a recognisable peer group.
Masterclass generated an enormous return on the investment of £33,000 and has gained such fame within our business that we are expanding the delegate numbers substantially for 2009/10 into two programmes in line with a new Career Progression Path, which takes what we have learned about peer group working and applies it across our entire sales operation.
Additional benefits have been firstly, the formation of a dynamic internal Leadership Team for Masterclass. The members of this team are non-management and their position as peers rather than “masters” of Masterclass has also better enabled us to understand staff and client churn. Secondly, we have identified significant training ability in a number of the delegates and will be utilising those skills within the next programme.
Masterclass formed eighteen strangers into an elite peer group. It ignored the distinctions of markets and experiences and established new standards by pushing the limits of the knowledge and skills of our very best people to significant new levels.
Faced with difficult trading conditions, many companies look to raise the standards at the lowest end of the business by focusing resources on poor performance. We did the exact opposite. We played to our strengths and invested in the very people who were already delivering well for us.
As a result we retained 95% of them and put another million in the bank!
