Hannah Simons
Furza is delighted to announce that we have been recognised as one of the UK’s ‘Top Sales Training Provider 2024’ by Manage HR Magazine.
Earlier this year, Furza ran an extensive recruitment campaign with a dedicated assessment day to build a right-fit sales team for Glide, working in partnership with them to develop a bespoke, 3-month sales training academy, empowering the team with the skills and knowledge required to contribute to the continued growth of the business.
We recently spoke to the Direct Sales Lead at Glide, Ben McGuinness, about his experience.
About Glide
For over 20 years, Glide has empowered small, medium and large businesses across multiple sectors by bringing infrastructure to hard to reach markets. Their structured approach enables the growth and success of businesses with a reliable, fully invested and terabit-ready network.
The Challenge
Glide identified two challenges they faced with generating new business opportunities and growing the business. Glide has a large market to target and a vast amount of data in their system to explore, however, they lacked sufficient time and resources to make a significant impact in the space. As a result, they were unable to dedicate enough time to building value with potential customers, leading to lost business to competitors and insufficient brand exposure. Ben also acknowledged a lack of process in the recruitment, onboarding and training of new sales hires at Glide. Firstly, finding high-potential talent that had the drive and ambition to be a part of their growth plans, but also, the resources to develop those high-potential individuals into target-attaining salespeople.
"Here at Glide we want our junior talent to feel invested in, we want them to know they have a route to success and a career they can grow and develop in. That’s why I saw value in the Furza training programme, as it allowed us to invest in young, new talent that can future-proof our business."
Ben McGuinness, Direct Sales Laad, Glide
The Furza Solution
Ben and his team selected Furza to manage an end-to-end recruitment and training process for their sales team. The key factor for Glide’s decision was the impact of adding additional resources to their established sales function.
Recruiting
The Furza team conducted an extensive recruitment campaign to find Glide a right-fit team for their exciting growth plans, with Glide office locations across the UK, Furza ran a bespoke assessment day in their Birmingham offices. Over 600 applications were screened, to narrow down the talent to a day of 15 individuals. On the assessment day, a range of assessments took place to assess suitability, with 3 three high-potential graduates securing their place in the Furza Academy to complete 3 months of training.
Training
Furza worked with Glide to create a bespoke training programme aligned to their industry, their market, and their ICP. Using a consultative approach to training allowed Furza to develop the new Glide hires in line with their wider business objectives. All the training was delivered in-house, face to face with our team of experts.
The Result
The outbound sales function at Glide is now a well-rounded and cohesive team, with the knowledge and skills to deliver results for the business. The SDR function has allowed them to make significant progress in out-reach to new potential customers, with one member onboarding a new customer within the first 6 weeks of the programme.
"Without the SDRs, we simply wouldn’t have been able to hit the sales target. I wouldn’t understate the importance of this model and an outbound process for sales leaders trying to grow their business. Furza has been fantastic from the start, the training they implement – the methodologies and processes has been exactly how I envisaged my team selling. How the SDRs speak of Furza is a testament to the impact they have on graduate salespeople, and their process will be a blueprint for Glide, not just for this cohort, but for cohorts in the future."
Ben McGuinness, Direct Sales Lead, Glide
Furza is committed to finding, training and nurturing talented graduates to become the next generation of sales leaders. If you’re looking to build or grow your team, contact one of our experts today.
