Clients: The Mergermarket Group

Background : The Mergermarket Group is the must-have intelligence service for anyone involved in Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A), offering different products for a range of financial disciplines. Their tools provide proprietary intelligence on potential deal flow, mandates and valuations via the world’s largest group of M&A journalists and analysts who have direct access to the most senior decision-makers. Since December 1999, it has become the fastest growing business in its sector, expanding across Europe, the Americas and the Asia-Pacific region. The Mergermarket Group was acquired by the Financial Times Group, publisher of the Financial Times newspaper, FT.com and a division of Pearson plc, in August 2006.

The Challenge: mergermarket’s sales division was performing to a high standard before youbecome™ became involved. However, they realised how important it was to maintain staff morale and retain key members of staff, and decided to take steps in learning to understand the motivational drivers in their staff, what they needed to do to maintain high morale and performance levels, as well as how to avoid complacency and retain staff.

The Solution :working directly with CEO, Hamilton Matthews, youbecome™ conducted a comprehensive staff morale survey across the whole of the sales division, measuring areas such as leadership, motivation, sales skills and processes, and market feedback. Analysing the survey results, key areas were highlighted. Staff believed there was a need for more ‘on-the-job’ coaching from their line managers which, in turn, would lead to improved morale, a key driver for the project. A comprehensive training and coaching process for his line managers implemented and carried out by youbecome™, together with developing mergermarket’s competence framework for their sales staff which is used as part of the performance review process. The relationship has proved highly successful with consistently high sales results achieved and top performers remaining within the business.

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youbecome services used:

• Customer Retention Management
• Sales Performance Management
• Employee Engagement
• Performance Management
• Leadership Coaching and Mentoring