CLIENT SUCCESS STORY
Elmar Remondino Groupe Mutuel
About Groupe Mutuel
Sales Training Role
– Elmar Remondino –
Q&A with Elmar
Tell us about yourself and your sales training role at Groupe mutuel
I live with my family in Valais, a Swiss canton just a stone’s throw from Italy and France. In my free time, I like to spend time in the mountains and especially to renovate an old building; it’s paradise for me.
I have been working at Groupe Mutuel for more than 20 years and have held various positions. Since 2011, I have been managing GMAcademy (Groupe Mutuel Commercial Academy) with the mission of training our sales force. Together with my team, we create training programmes for future salespeople and experienced salespeople. These training programmes cover soft skills, knowledge of the insurance industry, technical understanding of Groupe Mutuel’s products and innovation. Our goal is to equip the sales team with all the tools, knowledge and skills they need to reach ultimate satisfaction and performance. In brief, we aim to train advisors to be able to solve the insurance needs of our customers.
We also participate in the recruitment of the Groupe Mutuel sales force; our objective is to select candidates with natural sales skills, which we will then develop. During the recruitment process, we use both SalesTest and PersProfile from Versus. These two psychometric assessment tools help us make the right recruitment decisions by providing us with information about each person’s sales skills, motivations and comfort zones. Like many of us at Groupe Mutuel, I am a strong supporter of both SalesTest and PersProfile; I have no doubt that they help us build a top-notch sales force. Their systematic use has allowed us to significantly reduce recruitment mistakes that are very costly and time consuming for the company.
Groupe Mutuel is one of the largest life and health insurers in Switzerland with more than 1.3 million private policyholders and approximately 24,000 corporate clients. Groupe Mutuel is the last insurer to cover all life and health insurance. As a large insurance company, we play a key role on a socio-economic level. Our mission at Groupe Mutuel is to best serve our customers. To do this, we seek to recruit people who are talented, motivated and share Groupe Mutuel’s values. The secret to the excellence of our services lies both in the loyalty of our teams and in the determination of our employees.
To better serve our customers, the management team has changed its strategy: we have moved from selling our products mainly through third parties to a more direct sales approach thanks to our own sales team. To achieve this, we had to expand our internal sales department and we continue to do so year after year. We interview more than 150 candidates every year. GMAcademy plays a key role in the success of this strategic change by developing a world-class sales force. The strategy has paid off — both sales and customer loyalty have increased.
The GMAcademy team also includes Markéta Rouiller, Sébastien Amy and Markus Nuetzi. Together, we design the GMAcademy training programmes and run them. We strive to provide training tailored to individual needs. We constantly align our training with the company’s strategy, new products, the evolution of the insurance world, the required business skills, the evolution of legislation and any other changes affecting the sales force.
To do this, we need to be aware of what is happening within the sales team, the company and the insurance industry in general. We also need to be alert, agile and flexible.
We use different training formats and techniques to deliver effective educational programmes. We have a pedagogical library and we offer individual or group training, either virtually or face-to-face. We also create short video clips that are easy to consume remotely. Registered training modules or refresh modules allow the sales team to benefit from punctual training, to access the modules anywhere, at any time and as many times as necessary.
As part of sales skills training, we use SalesTest and PersProfile to help us recognise educational needs. The results of these assessments allow us to identify areas requiring further development, and we adapt our training accordingly. These business skills include aspects such as the ability to get a first contact, recognise and adapt to the customer’s behavioural profile to be more impactful, negotiate and conclude.
From feedback we receive, we find that candidates appreciate and value the insights they get from the Versus assessments, and also how they can use those insights in their professional development journey. Following are some examples of comments from candidates, which are representative of the type of feedback we commonly receive:
- “Thank you for the analysis carried out through PersProfile and in which I fully recognise myself.”
- “My future work will require a lot of adaptation efforts. Mastering my way of working will facilitate this adaptation.”
- “The image of my professional functioning given by PersProfile analysis totally illustrates my mode of operation, and I am surprised that in so few questions we arrive at such a degree of finesse in the analysis.”
- “I did not see myself that way, but it is true that my current work requires from me a profound change in my way of functioning professionally. The PersProfile analysis helped me to get to know myself better.”
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| Talent Profiling Suite
SalesTest and PersProfile are part of Versus Talent Profiling Suite of easy-to-use, multilingual assessment tools.
For more information about Groupe Mutuel careers, products or services, visit their website:
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