Case studies

Camden Council - Ensuring the success of their Refuse and Recycling services.

Background
The Commercial Waste team at the London Borough of Camden provides refuse and recycling collection services to local businesses. Local and national competitors are moving in and competing hard so the Camden team needs to take an increasingly proactive and skillful approach to servicing and retaining their customers as well as winning new ones. The business plan clearly sets out refuse and recycling collection services targets and the teams need to meet these.

Objectives
For individuals in the refuse and recycling teams to meet the new targets for retaining and winning customers.

Actions
The first step was detailed research and in-depth conversations with council staff on the council's long term and short term refuse and recycling plans, marketing strategy and statistics showing the numbers and types of customers and prospects involved, Having done this Ann then ran a 1- day sales workshop for 8 in combination with individual 1-1 coaching phone calls before and afterwards. The work covered the sales process, tools and techniques all moulded to suit Camden Council's context and individuals.

Results
Following their work with Ann evidence and feedback showed that individuals had a much better understanding of their refuse and recycling services product and were confidently explaining the many benefits of using Camden council, asking the right questions, getting better rapport more quickly with existing and new customers and were more confident and therefore more proactive in approaching their sales calls - doing more of them and more effectively. They had found practical ways of record-keeping to improve their follow ups and efficiency and had also created a profile of their competitors to help the sales team. They were also sharing out tips within the team at regular sales meetings so that newer members quickly picked up on the experience and local knowledge of their colleagues with everyone benefitting from regular reminders of 'tried and tested' practice and the momentum and 'sense of team' that comes from that.

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