?What If!

The Client

?What If! is the world’s leading innovation consultancy. The company has over 300 staff working in offices in 4 countries, and their client list reads as a who’s who within the global marketing community.

The company is well-known for its innovative ideas for some of the most famous brands in the world. They developed the ‘Taste the difference’ brand for Sainsbury and recently developed and launched Whateverhappens for Currys.

The Situation

As well as innovating for clients on a project basis, ?What If! works with clients to increase their innovation capability - developing skills, organisational structures and mechanisms, and identifying and developing how to lead for successful innovation. Chris Barez Brown is the Director responsible for the learning practice, and in 2006 wanted to significantly increase the levels of new business that his team closed.

With large sales targets looming, Chris was unsure of his team’s sales abilities, and had  to balance allocating enough time for sales whilst keeping the billing levels up. He did, however, have fantastically happy clients, and a very powerful service to promote. The requirement for a ‘different’ type of sales backup team to match his own team became apparent.

The Solution

Buyingtime assembled some key resources to help Chris to achieve his aims. We worked closely with the team to deliver:

• Pitch development to take their complex proposition to market – in a short form.
• Sales coaching – one-on-one coaching for each team member to make them comfortable in a sales environment and aware of where they were in a sales cycle.
• New sales meetings – two batches of 15 new business meetings, booked with innovation and training managers within a specific set of agreed companies.

Over a 12 month period the team in the learning division visited over 30 companies introduced through the Buyingtime team, and owned the sales cycle in every instance.

The Benefits

Since 2006 the team at ?What If! Learning has grown from 7 to over 40. In our first year of working together the team closed 3 new clients from introductions facilitated by Buyingtime.

Those new clients include Dixons Stores Group, Levis Strauss and O2. We continue to work together on projects as diverse as TOP DOG and ?What If! Ventures through to project work for the learning team.

‘Buyingtime have changed the way my team approaches sales – they have refined our proposition, coached our team, and delivered quality sales leads  which we have hunted down’.
Chris Barez Brown – Director