A leading European industrial group operating across 27 countries was facing a challenge that’s anything but uncommon, yet critically underestimated: its sales organisation had grown organically over the years, was decentralised by design, and structurally fragmented. Despite holding a stable market position, commercial performance consistently fell short of top management’s expectations.
The real issue wasn’t just revenue. It was the lack of visibility into the actual capabilities within the sales team. There was no unified view of:
The company knew that untapped potential was there — but not where exactly, or how significant it was. Traditional HR and performance data simply weren’t sufficient to support well-founded structural decisions.
The central challenge wasn’t just performance. It was decision-making capability: How do you objectively assess a pan-European sales organisation with thousands of customer touchpoints — and realign it efficiently at the same time?
Together with top management, a clear target picture was defined, one that went far beyond simple cost-cutting:
At the heart of it all was one central question: What does an optimal sales organisation in this industry actually look like — measured against the top 20% of performers? The goal wasn’t incremental improvement. It was a data-driven restructuring that would fundamentally reshape both efficiency and cost structure.
To address this challenge, a comprehensive Commercial Talent Assessment was implemented — combining quantitative and qualitative analysis to create, for the first time, end-to-end transparency across the entire sales organisation. The project was built on four core pillars:
The first step was a systematic evaluation of the technical competency level across the sales force, covering:
The assessment was fully standardised, enabling objective comparisons across countries, teams, and functions.
Complementing the hard skills, key behavioural and competency dimensions were analysed — the ones that actually drive commercial success:
This layer revealed not just that performance gaps existed, but why they existed.
All participants worked through a company-specific business case that reflected real-world sales scenarios. The objective: analyse decision-making behaviour under realistic conditions. Key focus areas included:
This component ensured that not just theoretical knowledge, but actual commercial decision-making ability was assessed.
One of the most powerful levers of the entire project was a detailed analysis of how time was actually being allocated within the sales function. The findings were eye-opening:
This transparency became a decisive driver for the subsequent reorganisation.
Armed with comprehensive analysis, a deep restructuring of the sales organisation was developed and executed together with the client. The results were significant:
But the most important impact wasn’t purely financial. It was qualitative: the organisation became clearer, more focused, and more comparable. Decisions around people, roles, and resources could from this point on be made based on data — not gut feel.
This case illustrates what large industrial companies stand to gain from a data-driven Commercial Talent Analysis. In complex, internationally grown sales organisations, it’s rarely missing individual competencies that limit performance. More often, it’s structural inefficiencies and unclear role models that are holding things back.
By combining hard and soft skill assessments, realistic business cases, time-spent transparency, and industry-specific benchmarking, it became possible — for the first time — to build a complete picture of the organisation.
The result wasn’t a theoretical optimisation exercise. It was a concrete, executed restructuring with a measurable financial impact.
For top management, the lesson is clear: Commercial Excellence isn’t just a matter of strategy — it’s a matter of transparency: about your people, their capabilities, and how they spend their time.
Get in touch via the contact form or book an appointment directly with Stefan Pogatsch. Let’s explore where impact can be unlocked.
