Crunch Time: Creating An Appetite For Change
A global business, like Kellogg, needs ground-breaking software to stay ahead of the game. When it came to the crunch, they approached Enthuse to help their implementation of new field sales technology, to make sure employees across Europe had an appetite for change.
The client
The Kellogg’s brand is a household name around the world, so the Enthuse team was delighted to put its expertise to good use when the cereal giant called on us for support.
The world’s leading cereal company, Kellogg manufactures and markets products in 180 countries worldwide.
As part of its 2020 Growth Plan, Kellogg Europe made the bold decision to invest in leading sales technology to help its European field team work smarter.
By upgrading its sales technology, Kellogg hoped its field sales colleagues would strengthen relationships with store managers, reduce admin time, make more sales calls and, ultimately, increase their sales.
The challenge
Although the new field sales software and technology signalled a positive move for the sales team, Kellogg was conscious of the need to handle change delicately, to secure support from all involved.
Kellogg would be the first company to roll out the technology across its entire European sales network, predominantly to non-English speaking employees. Therefore, communication about the project had to work in all target languages and countries.
The objective
Enthuse wanted the Kellogg field sales teams to be excited about the new technology and feel confident in using it as soon as it launched.
We aimed to achieve this through a series of communication and engagement tools, designed to help employees adopt and embrace the new technology quickly and successfully.
The solution
Enthuse set to work with Kellogg’s Programme Lead and project team to develop a communications strategy that would enable this ambitious project to run smoothly.
To facilitate this, and to complement a previous Kellogg change project we’d also led the communications for Enthuse and the Kellogg team created a character named KASPER, who would represent the project.
KASPER stands for Kellogg Accelerating Sales Performance and Enabling Reps and is part of the same family as K-TIE, a character we used to implement a previous IT sales project for Kellogg.
The friendly face of the project, KASPER created a buzz about the new technology and directed employees to information and resources about the technology upgrade. To kick off, the Enthuse team ran a communications workshop. This enabled us to conduct audience mapping, establish a tone of voice, and develop a key message house of proof points to help the teams understand the need for change.
The communications strategy for KASPER had five strategic pillars:
Create awareness
Develop understanding
Create excitement and manage resistance
Keep promises and be consistent
Commitment and advocacy
We appointed 12 Single Points of Contact (SPOCs) to pioneer the project in each market. International employees trusted their own SPOC, which made it easier for KASPER to gain their support.
We worked with translators to provide all materials in the target language for each market and subtitle any films shot in English.
Each SPOC had a communication toolkit to help implement the project - this featured tips and tools to communicate with and prepare teams for the change.
Enthuse established weekly communications to all colleagues in the run-up to the launch and held bi-weekly calls with SPOCs to monitor the progress of the campaign in each geographical area.
As Kellogg was limiting its business travel at the time, to reduce costs and environmental impact, we adopted measures to deliver all communications virtually. These included uploading all documents, in all languages, to the company intranet; setting up internal social media network, Yammer, to encourage communication between teams; and using Skype for Business to stay in touch with international colleagues.
We set up individual Yammer pages for each market, running live Q&A sessions to give employees the chance to speak up and address their concerns.
The Enthuse team also set up a dedicated KASPER mailbox, so field sales team employees could send emails to a direct point of contact and receive a clear and timely response.
Not only did we set up regular monitoring and evaluation to ensure the strategy was achieving its objectives, but we also stayed flexible to adapt to any necessary changes along the way.
The results
The results of the KASPER internal communications project were remarkable.
The Enthuse team won the award for Best Internal Communications Campaign at the North West Pride Awards and received a commendation at the Institute of Internal Communications Awards for our work on the KASPER project.
“KASPER signalled the first time in our history that all field sales teams across Europe worked in one consistent way. Implementation lead us to win awards for change management” Rich Bradley, European IT Director.
Kellogg saw an unexpectedly high uplift in sales straight after the launch of the new field sales technology, and colleagues embraced the change enthusiastically.
One employee said of KASPER: “I love that little man!”
Thanks to KASPER, field sales employees can now visit 27% more stores each week, leading to a 29% increase in sales.
100% of end-users felt capable of using the new technology, with 66% feeling good or proficient immediately after its launch. This number has been growing ever since.
To communicate the project’s success across Europe, Enthuse produced case studies showing the difference KASPER had made to field sales employees’ day-to-day lives.
One such case study read: “KASPER is so straightforward to use. In fact, we were given two books as part of the training and I haven’t needed to open either of them because KASPER is so easy to navigate, and everything was explained on the training day.
“It’s made my job 100% better.”
The Enthuse difference
Working with Enthuse at each step of the run-up to - and implementation of - the KASPER project enabled Kellogg Europe to prepare colleagues for this monumental business change.
We don’t just deliver a communication plan, then sign off. When you work with Enthuse, we’re in it together for the duration of your project, and beyond.
Our extensive work with Kellogg’s teams across Europe led to an overwhelmingly successful launch for the KASPER project - and we are proud to have gained industry recognition for this ambitious project.
Richard Bradley, Kellogg’s KASPER Project Lead, said:
“I knew that the two critical components that would set this project up for success would be the effective implementation of the technology, along with the desire of colleagues to adapt to the new ways of working. Getting a shiny new iPad may sound like an easy sell but it was actually a challenge to ask people to adapt to a new way of working - (not just the technology, but a new way of selling).
“I knew from the start that without a strong engagement strategy, this change would not have landed – based on previous and similar projects the business has tried to deliver historically.
“Andrea [from Enthuse] worked within the project team to provide communication support throughout: covering everything from how we worked together as a project team, through to engaging SPOCs and end-users alike – and everything in between to ensure KASPER landed well. Andrea injected the project with positivity, creativity and energy and I’m delighted to have had her as part of a project that has been described internally by our European Leadership Team as one of our most successful change management projects of the last decade!”