US Foods Salesforce Training

As one of America’s great food companies and leading distributors, US Foods is Keeping Kitchens Cooking and making life easier for its diverse customer base, which spans the restaurant, healthcare, hospitality, government and education sectors. With approximately $22 billion in annual revenue, the company offers more than 350,000 products, including high-quality exclusive brands such as:

• Chef’s Line – a time-saving, chef-inspired line of scratch-quality products.
• Rykoff Sexton – a premium line of specialty ingredients sources from around the world.

The company is based in Rosemont, Illinois and employs approximately 25,000 people nationwide.

A traditional food service broadline distributor, US Foods has a vast and varied offering, from sugar packets to filet mignons, and an expansive sales force of more than 60 distinct divisions spread across the country. Due to the complicated and detailed subject matter, many salespeople were not confident selling COP (Center of the Plate) products-pork, beef, poultry and seafood. Aiming to increase sales revenue, US Foods needed a comprehensive, scalable training program that would give sales teams the confidence and competence to sell high-margin COP products.

“We wanted world-class training for our people and wanted it implemented quickly and at a high level. That’s when we turned to the experts at CARA to help us develop and pilot this program,” said Tamra Zygmunt, Marketing Vice President, Stock Yards, US Foods.

Prior to designing the workshops, CARA’s instructional design consultant spearheaded the training needs analysis, working with the US Foods team to clearly define training and development expectations. Meanwhile, the US Foods COP marketing and merchandising staff focused on pulling together content.

In less than two months, the CARA consultant and US Foods staff had completed the design and content for a hands-on and interactive classroom training program that was ready to test. CARA began the COP training in two pilot locations, Chicago and New York, where trainees attended a series of eight three-hour workshops based on the different types of COP proteins. The program was taught by subject matter experts, such as butchers and seafood specialists, and supported by training facilitators who had the critical job of ensuring that the experts’ knowledge was effectively applied to the sales environment. This was achieved through role-play, menu analysis and other sales training techniques to round out the simulated sales experience.

After the pilot was completed and feedback collected, key adjustments were made to the program, including adding an e-learning module. This blended approach of e-learning and classroom workshops allowed US Foods to quickly reap the benefits of the training across geographically dispersed divisions without taking salespeople “off the street” for too long.

Accountability played a significant part in the overall training program. At the end of every workshop, salespeople were instructed to apply their newly acquired knowledge by selling COP products that they had just learned about to customers who weren’t currently buying them. Then, at the start of the next workshop, teams shared the stories of their successes and challenges. Their experiences were captured and included in future sessions of the course.

“If you really want to drive sales growth, doing training for training’s sake isn’t going to do the trick. Working with CARA, we learned quickly that we had to adjust our approach and apply the accountability factor,” said Zygmunt. “While product knowledge and selling skills were important to us, if the sales team doesn’t know what to do with it while they’re out in the field, these methods won’t increase sales. The key was adding accountability to the formula.”

In only four months, the design and development process with CARA and the first two pilots in New York and Chicago were completed. US Foods then began the process of rolling out COP training to divisions across the country, training 4,500 sales representatives in a little over a year. As the sales staff completed their training and put their new sales skills to work, US Foods saw COP sales rise between 10-14 percent among the sales divisions nationwide.

“Our sales teams experienced increased camaraderie and developed better team selling approaches, which were not part of our original goal, but we were thrilled to see,” said Zygmunt. “Peer learning was a big part of this overall program that our people were able to take advantage of, and it truly created an enhanced teamwork structure within the organization.”