Training delivers higher sales for Pitney Bowes : Revenues, productivity and order values improve at franking and mailstream company

Purpose – Describes how sales training for six key employees improved performance at franking and mailstream company Pitney Bowes. Design/methodology/approach – Examines the reasons for the training, the form it took and the success it has achieved. Findings – Reveals that a training‐needs analysis highlighted the need for the training to improve: product knowledge; marketplace knowledge; customer‐applications knowledge; questioning skills; proposal‐generation skills; business‐planning skills; and vertical marketing knowledge. Practical implications – Details how the course improved revenue, the value of the average order and the number of orders per head. Social implications – Describes how the market in which the company operates had undergone significant changes, with deregulation of the UK postal market and Royal Mail's new postal‐price structure driving consumers to review how they communicate with their customers. Originality/value – Reveals how the training helped to change the perception of the company from being one that purely dealt with franking machines to one that offered broad expertise in a multi‐solution, mailstream world.