Equipping Sales Teams to Drive Long-Term Growth

Partnering with R&D Departments

The challenge

Ajinomoto is a global B2B leader in food ingredients, known for its innovations in the food, health and wellness industries.

Close collaboration with its clients is key to success for Ajinomoto, to ensure product innovations align with evolving customer needs.

Ajinomoto North America’s (ANA) sales interactions had been trending towards transactional, focused on fulfilling product orders and maintaining existing relationships. The business’s innovation function in North America recognised an opportunity to develop a more consultative approach, empower the sales team to collaborate more closely with client R&D teams, and develop strategic partnerships allowing ANA to anticipate and proactively support client innovation needs.

To help deepen client relationships and advance a more customer-centred approach, they sought a training solution to equip their sales team with more strategic, empathy-driven skills.

What we did

Treehouse Innovation identified True & North’s Client-centred Thinking methodology – which uses design thinking, neuroscience and behavioural economics – as an ideal solution for this challenge.

ANA’s sales team, senior executives and innovation leaders came together for a full-day workshop, facilitated by True & North, in St. Louis, Missouri.

The session included practical exercises, role-playing scenarios, and interactive discussions, allowing the team to develop empathy and understand customer challenges on a deeper level.

The results

The Ajinomoto’s sales team walked away ready to apply the customer-centred skills they had learnt. We received fantastic feedback via post-workshop assessments, with 81% agreeing that they felt confident that the workshop would have a positive impact on their work.

“The presenter was engaging and the content was extremely relatable” – attendee

Impact stats from the client

STRONG DELEGATE ENGAGEMENT

• 8.8 out of 10 overall workshop rating
• 9.3 out of 10 facilitator rating
• “The presenter was engaging and the content was extremely relatable” – attendee

“Things are proceeding very well, and the team is utilising the True & North training on a regular basis. “

Tony Hundt, Director, Sales – Ajinomoto Health & Nutrition North America, Inc.