Hyster-Yale Unifies 800+ Sellers with Tech-Enabled Sales Approach

See how this manufacturing leader transformed scattered messaging into guided selling success.

About Hyster-Yale Group

Creating a unified sales approach that resonates across a large organization is no small feat. Hyster-Yale, a titan in the material handling industry, faced this very challenge head-on. They sought to not only innovate their enablement approach but to ensure their entire sales team—including an extensive dealer network—embraced the change wholeheartedly.

Key Takeaways

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Trained internal and external sales teams across North America with customer acquisition and executive conversation skills.
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Ensured alignment and a consistent buying experience by extending training to product and marketing teams.
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Drove adoption of new skills and selling behaviors by integrating skills training and coaching playbooks into Highspot and Salesforce.

The Challenge

Hyster-Yale’s sales organization is split into two groups: An internal major accounts team and the company’s dealer network—an invaluable part of their sales force that includes approximately 30 independent local distributors across North America.

One significant challenge involved the message their sellers were presenting to prospects.

Because Hyster Yale’s products are so strong, sales discussions were predominantly focused on those products’ features and benefits. This approach, however, overlooked a critical aspect of the sales process—understanding the unique challenges and goals of the buyer. Given the diversity of industries Hyster-Yale serves, the way customers use their equipment varies, influenced by specific industry dynamics, challenges, and economic factors.

Recognizing this, it became imperative for Hyster-Yale to adapt their sales strategy to prioritize the buyer. The goal was to shift from a transactional approach to a more consultative one, where a deep understanding of the buyer’s industry and unique needs become the foundation of every sales conversation.

The entire organization needed to make a fundamental shift in how they had been engaging with buyers. They needed a new sales approach, but they also needed every seller to adopt it.

“From an enablement standpoint, one of the challenges that everybody has is driving adoption,” says Bob Bladel, VP of Training and Sales Enablement at Hyster-Yale. “I’d say the biggest challenge that we had was: How do we make sure that we can drive adoption throughout the entire organization—both the internal team as well as the external dealer salespeople.”

Without widespread adoption, the company’s message could become diluted across its dispersed sales force, which would make it increasingly difficult for buyers to grasp the true value of Hyster Yale’s offerings.

The Solution

Persuading sellers to embrace a new approach is no easy task, particularly within a large and complex sales organization. Hyster-Yale’s success is a testament to the importance of embracing technology and innovation to overcome adoption obstacles and reinforce new behaviors.

The company began by rolling out Corporate Visions skills for customer acquisition and executive engagement.

With customer acquisition skills training, internal and external sellers across the company learned how to put their prospects’ challenges before the product, differentiate their solution, and make inroads into some high-growth areas in their market. In the executive conversations skills training, sellers learned how to engage executive buyers and build urgency into their messages to prevent stalled deals.

These initiatives laid the foundation for sellers to building pipeline and deliver an impactful story—one that articulates the attributes that make Hyster-Yale a differentiated player in their industry.

But that was just the beginning of their journey. While sales training is valuable, its effectiveness is only as good as its implementation. Sellers might feel motivated during training but return to old habits when they’re back at work.

So, Hyster-Yale turned its attention to driving adoption and reinforcement of the new skills. And they recognized the need for a tech-enabled solution to create a guided selling process.

The turning point in their transformation was integrating Corporate Visions messages, skills, and coaching playbooks into two tools: Highspot—a leading sales enablement platform—and Salesforce.

Corporate Visions training content is embedded into Highspot. And they can serve tailored information from Highspot directly to the opportunity in Salesforce.

Imagine 800+ salespeople across the continent having all the content and tools they need for success, right at their fingertips, exactly when they need them. That’s precisely what Hyster-Yale achieved by integrating Corporate Visions messaging, sales skills, and playbooks within Highspot and Salesforce.

“Now, Highspot, all of our e-learning, and our learning management system are all integrated into Salesforce,” adds Bladel. “Our representatives have one place to go. Everything they need is instantly delivered in a guided selling process.”

How It Works

  1. A seller creates a new opportunity in Salesforce.
  2. They fill out a few key pieces of information, like the industry, opportunity stage, and product needs.
  3. The system dynamically delivers content like message examples, e-learning modules, coaching playbooks, and product resources—all tailored to the information entered about each opportunity.

The Results

Not only has their guided selling process increased sellers’ chances of success, leading to more closed-won deals, but it’s also helped sellers see the value of entering information in the CRM.

“The biggest surprise through all this is that it has not only made our sellers more successful and comfortable with the approach we’ve implemented, but it’s also driving the adoption of the CRM,” says Bladel. “In the past, we lacked visibility to our pipeline until it reached the quoting stage. We’re now seeing full pipeline visibility, which is extremely important to us as a manufacturing organization.”

What’s more, Hyster-Yale recently began a pilot for TruVoice, Corporate Visions’ win-loss analysis and buyer insights platform, to enhance their ability to coach their reps immediately after every deal based on buyer feedback.

Bladel says that this feedback and coaching “enables representatives to adjust their behaviors, understanding not just the right content and message but also what resonates with prospects and drives them to choose our services.”

By integrating Corporate Visions messages, skills training, and technology solutions with Highspot and Salesforce, Hyster-Yale not only addressed the challenges they faced—they’ve propelled their sales organization into a new era of sales excellence.

The new approach has been adopted by more than just sales. After going through customer acquisition training, Hyster-Yale’s marketing team is now aligned to the new way of messaging and positioning their solutions.

Every piece of content starts by addressing the buyer’s challenges before pitching the solution, ensuring that marketing and sales are communicating a consistent message in every conversation with their buyers.

Hyster-Yale’s story shows how combining the right sales skills, messages, and content with smart technology can boost performance and adoption. Now, every buyer-seller interaction, across the entire organization, reflects the value and strategic vision of the organization.

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