One of New Zealand's most successful global brands, Fonterra provides dairy products to millions of consumers in 140 countries around the world. Employing 16,000 people in New Zealand and internationally, Fonterra uses its knowledge, people and products to bring the best of dairy to the world, and provide the best returns back to farmers.
To achieve its vision of being the natural source of dairy nutrition for everybody, everywhere, Fonterra needed to increase product knowledge and sales capability with its global sales team. With such a strong vision, Fonterra's focus was on creating learning solutions that would give sales staff a competitive edge and deliver strongly on KPIs, such as value of sale.
Optimism led the effort to create a global framework that addressed Product and Application Knowledge. The end goal of the framework was to enable Fonterra's sales team to sell with confidence and competence, and to help them build credibility and maximise sales value.
Developing the framework involved consultation with product specialists, global salespeople and Fonterra's sales capability team. Ultimately, it delivered an overarching strategy that includes KPIs and ROI measures to ensure the end goal is being achieved.
Having established the high level framework, Optimism identified the knowledge levels required for each team and mapped out an integrated learning approach for every level. Training components included:
Projects include:
With the strategy in place, Optimism continues to work in partnership with Fonterra to develop the eLearning components of their education framework.
Taking a strategic approach to learning and development, with the endorsement of key internal stakeholders, has paid dividends in the form of prioritised training that is efficient, effective and has increased global sales.