Oil and Gas Industry

Xsell has been working with an oil and gas company in Australia who also has offices in Europe, the US and Dubai. 

For reasons of confidentially the client has asked not to be identified.  The company offers consulting services in environmental, concept, design, assurance and safety. 

With the onset of the global financial crisis, projects were put on hold and the company found itself like others without the required chargeable hours.  Xsell was engaged to assist with sales in the pacific region with the possibility to going into China and extending its presence in Asia.

Xsell worked with the management team to form a strategic plan for the local business, which melded into the overall company, plans and from their sales strategy plans were formulated.  Each division had its own sales plan, which fed into the strategy plan for the Australian office.  The approach that was used here was the balanced score card, which linked the business financials, customers, internal processes and people development.  Through this process the client was then able to set key performance indicators for each of divisions, with chargeable target hours as one of the indicators.

Most engineers do not see themselves as sales people and the challenge for the company and Xsell was to take ten engineers and turn them into business development managers.

The work with the divisional heads commenced by profiling, using the Xsell sales profile which determines the natural sales traits and communication styles.  From the profile a program was written to compliment the skill set of the engineers, further each divisional head had access to a coach to assist with marketing touch points.

The staff were given training on soft skills, sales techniques, building relationships and changing their focus from operational duties to broader duties which would grow the business. 

As result from this project, the client has benefited by:

• Winning more projects
• A need to increase engineering staff numbers
• The divisional heads have become more familiar and comfortable with networking
• More focus on sales pipelines resulting in ongoing work
• There has been an increase in retention of staff as there is more work variety

Through the process the business outcomes, which needed to be delivered to international headquarters, were delivered ahead of time and the business continues to grow.

Xsell continues to work with this client on a retainer basis as the business gears up for further growth.