Hannah Simons
After investment, BCIS were looking to accelerate their hiring and build an established sales team to be proactive in winning new opportunities. With Furza they now have:
- A robust, highly-effective outbound sales team
- Repeatable, scalable model for ramping new hires
- Onboarded a third cohort, resulting in a team of 16 high-performing salespeople
We recently spoke to Richard MacLean, Chief Commercial Officer at BCIS about his experience with Furza.
About BCIS
BCIS is the leading provider of independent cost data to the UK built environment. Their data platform helps clients across the built environment make informed business decisions, both financially and environmentally, enhancing the credibility of their activities to support clients with specialist skills, research and data.
After investment, BCIS were looking for efficient ways to accelerate their hiring and build an established junior sales team, trained to be pro-active in creating new opportunities within their market - supporting their current team and growth goals.
The Challenge
The BCIS team recognised they needed to quickly scale their go-to-market sales team significantly to help support the business’s revenue goals but lacked the time and infrastructure to recruit, onboard and train new hires to the standard they required.
"We knew we wanted to scale up our sales team but lacked the time and resources to do this effectively. We needed a model that provided an end-to-end solution, to ensure we had the top sales talent and they were ready to make an immediate impact."
Richard MacLean, Chief Commercial Officer, BCIS
The Furza Solution
Recruit
Advertising the role across all major job boards, Furza’s talent team generated over 500 applications for the Coventry-based roles. To ensure only the top 1% of applicants were put forward, the team ran rigorous assessments, conducting pre-screening calls and telephone interviews to ensure right-fit for BCIS, sales competencies, personality and desire for the role. From here, the Furza team ran bespoke, face to face, competency based assessment centres, enabling BCIS to select their teams in one day.
"Furza clearly understands what sales potential looks like, we were amazed at the quality of candidates that were at our assessment day – it was hard to make a decision from all the talent presented to us. To screen, interview and assess the sheer volume of applicants would have taken weeks if not months of management time internally, we were able to add this valuable time back to the business and secure the talent we wanted."
Richard MacLean, Chief Commercial Officer, BCIS
Training
Following a consultation, Furza and BCIS worked together to create bespoke training material that aligned with their market. Furza’s sales experts understood and contextualised the needs of BCIS and generated a training plan based on desired outcomes.
The BCIS candidates joined the academy in the Manchester offices for month one, starting the robust training, onboarding and development programme. Designed to quickly ramp graduates to deliver sales pipeline, the academies mixed theoretical sales training with on the job experience, including modules such as Cold Calling, B2B sales and Qualification. Tailoring this programme to BCIS ensured candidates had the specific skills and experience to succeed in their roles and hit the required targets.
In months two and three, the teams returned to the BCIS office to integrate learning, supported by the Furza team with virtual daily sales meetings and weekly team workshops, 1-1 coaching, performance reviews and KPI tracking. The teams quickly started producing results for BCIS, filling the pipeline with high-quality, qualified leads.
"The team joined us after finishing the one-month intensive training understanding what was expected of them and exactly how to execute their role. They had the key skills and frameworks in place to start making an impact, completely exceeding all my expectations. The Furza team continued to support the SDRs whilst they were actively engaging in their role, providing us with transparent feedback. This streamlined the management and continued development of the team, whilst helping us save time and drive quick ROI.”
Richard MacLean, Chief Commercial Officer, BCIS
The Result: Immediate Impact
Since implementing the teams, BCIS has:
- Developed an outbound sales function that drives market share
- Cut their typical time to ramp in half, resulting in quicker ROI
- Removed the time and cost of internal recruitment and training, saving over 300 hours of management time
- Developed a robust succession model to future proof the business
"Following conversations with BCIS, it was clear that we could help maximise the performance of the sales organisation. They are already a great team of people, so for Furza it was about how we can support them to continue to find great talent, support with development, training and mentorship to enable the next stage of their business growth journey."
James Hornsby, Director at Furza
"We couldn’t be more impressed with the team we have on board at BCIS and the speed at which they started hitting their targets. The quality of candidates Furza provided, the expert training and overall delivery is a true testament to their knowledge and expertise."
Richard MacLean, Chief Commercial Officer, BCIS
