Hannah Simons
Last year, Furza worked with IPI to build a junior sales function. Having previously used an outsourced marketing agency, IPI wanted to gain more control over its outbound process, looking to build an ambitious in-house sales team to help drive the next stage of its exciting growth journey.
We recently spoke to Sales and Marketing Director at IPI, Dave Glasgow, about his experience.
About IPI
Founded in 2001, IPI is an expert in Contact Centres, creating intelligent and innovative Contact Centre services and solutions that deliver exceptional customer and employee experiences. IPI’s team of experts add value at every part of the transformation journey, by providing bespoke consultancy services, training and enablement programmes, DevOps and integration, as well as a range of proprietary solutions and managed services, spanning the Contact Centre, automation and AI, workforce engagement, security and compliance, speech and text analytics, voice services, cloud, and outsourced IT.
With its headquarters in Reading and offices in London, Manchester and the Philippines, IPI’s clients include some of the biggest brands in the finance, insurance, retail, travel and leisure, utilities, higher education, and public sectors. Today it supports more than five million customer interactions and 65,000 agents every day.
With people at the heart of everything IPI does, investing in junior talent sat high on the company’s priority list. With this in mind, they were looking for a provider who not only shared their strong ethical business values but who they could trust in building the right-fit sales team with a passion to be successful.
Challenge
Having previously used an outsourced marketing agency, IPI wanted to gain more control over its outbound process, looking to build an in-house sales team to help drive the next stage of its exciting growth journey. The outsourced sales development function did not allow for real insight into the company’s mission, vision, or values, meaning they lost the opportunity to iterate and develop best practices, leading to low-quality leads and lost opportunities. In a crowded technical market, IPI was looking for talent dedicated to their business and the knowledge to thrive.
Furza's Solution
After examining the options available within the market, Dave Glasgow and his team selected Furza to manage the end-to-end recruitment and training process of their junior sales team. Furza’s expertise in the technology and SaaS market aligned with IPI, offering a refreshing approach in comparison to traditional sales recruiters.
Recruit
After generating hundreds of applications for IPI’s specific role based in Reading, Furza was able to deliver a pool of driven and ambitious candidates. These candidates went through an initial in-house pre-screening and competency-based assessment interview, to ensure only those who truly had a passion for sales and the business were successful. From here, candidates attended a face-to-face assessment day held in the IPI offices, where a range of activities took place to assess suitability.
"We were really impressed with how quickly Furza got a good volume of candidates together that all had qualities that resonated with what we were looking for. We were able to watch Furza coordinate a room full of young, eager and ambitious graduates in a process that we had great success from."
David Glasgow, Sales and Marketing Director, IPI
Training
The two successful candidates undertook our three-month Furza Academy training programme based in-house at Furza’s dedicated training facility. With a focus on the fundamental sales skills required to be successful in their market, the Academy equipped them with the resources and knowledge needed to hit the ground running.
Furza worked closely with IPI to contextualise and create a bespoke training programme that resonated with IPI, with a mix of methodology and practical learning to ensure the team had all the knowledge and skills required for success.
The Result
The sales development function at IPI is now a well-rounded and cohesive team, with the skills and specific product and industry knowledge required to drive results for the business.
"The team is doing really well, there was a lot of comfort knowing that the candidates we selected came through the Furza process and today are in our business thriving as young starters in the sales world, doing brilliantly. They arrived rearing to go, equipped with the skills for a business development role in tech sales."
Dave Glasgow, Sales and Marketing Director, IPI
