Ignite Procurement

The challenge

The challenge was not simply selling more. It was building a sales organisation able to win complex opportunities while entering a new market. Deal cycles are long, procurement often sits as gatekeeper, and access to economic buyers is hard to win. Reps need to navigate multiple stakeholders and build genuine champions inside each account.

Each rep carried different gaps: the shift from transactional to enterprise selling, consistency in building the business case, stakeholder management, and pipeline creation. Underneath some of these sat more human barriers — confidence, emotional regulation, focus, motivation.

“How do you build the capacity of the sales team while simultaneously building a new market?”

The foundation: strong leadership and commercial architecture

Strong leadership, a mature go-to-market strategy and a clear revenue architecture were already in place at Ignite before this work began. The engagement was built closely with CCO Remi Morken.

Coaching cannot fix a bad strategy or weak leadership, and a good process does not guarantee execution on its own — the value sits in connecting the two. Ignite provided the direction and the systems. The coaching built the human capability to execute inside them. The reps did the work themselves.

Strong leadership. Strong commercial architecture. Committed people. Performance Capacity. The results came from the combination.

The first three months: a Performance Capacity pilot

The first three months ran as a Performance Capacity pilot with the Swedish team and its management, testing whether stronger human capability would move behaviours and leading indicators.

Three months is too short a window to prove revenue outright, but it is enough time to see capability, behaviour and conversion begin to move — and to connect individual growth directly to the behaviours needed to win in Sweden.

The approach

This is not a new sales methodology. The focus sits on the human execution layer behind Ignite's own commercial approach, worked across three connected levels.

A feedback loop ran with management throughout: Data → Diagnosis → Development → Behaviour → Commercial Outcome.

57% improvement in value-confirmed conversion

Reflects more than activity: a greater share of opportunities progressed with meaningful customer value established, a strong signal in a complex, long-cycle sales environment. Win rate also rose over 70% from baseline.

These numbers moved alongside real behaviour change: discovery, business-case development, stakeholder management, prioritisation, ownership, enterprise execution.

Stronger business cases

The team's clearest gap was turning customer pain into a compelling business case: moving beyond explaining the product to demonstrating why solving the problem mattered to the customer's business.

This moved from a development area to a demonstrated strength, connecting problems to financial consequences and strategic priorities.

“From explaining what the solution does to demonstrating why the customer should change.”

Greater enterprise sales maturity

Manager assessments showed growth in stakeholder management, champion development, enterprise conversations, prioritisation, ownership, business-case creation, and reading real buying signals.

One salesperson improved on six dimensions with no decline; another built on an already strong baseline.

“The coaching relationship has created a lot of value, and we've seen significant improvement within the team.”

Remi Morken, CCO, Ignite Procurement

Building consistency under pressure

Long cycles create uncertainty: stalled deals, disappearing champions, cancelled meetings. Work focused on emotional regulation, confidence, focus, ownership and resilience, so people keep executing even without immediate results.

Goal: more consistent performers, not just better technique.

Raising performance without sacrificing engagement

Despite rising expectations, engagement stayed strong: eNPS of 67.

Raising the bar while building people's capacity to meet it.

“Employee satisfaction is extremely high, and the sales team is one of the most satisfied teams in the company. We should absolutely continue this work.”

Remi Morken, CCO, Ignite Procurement

What actually created the results?

Not an outside coach "fixing" a team. Ignite already had commercial ambition, strong leadership, a mature go-to-market strategy, and revenue architecture.

The pilot added systematic development of the human capabilities to execute within that system. Results came from the combination.

Performance Capacity as part of the commercial system

Strategy sets direction, revenue architecture builds the system, leadership sets standards, people still execute.

My role sits between: working with leadership to find where human performance limits execution, then closing that gap with individuals, without replacing management, methodology, or architecture.

What comes next

Early results are encouraging.

Next: tighten the loop between individual performance, management and commercial data (Data → Diagnosis → Development → Behaviour → Commercial Outcome), shifting from "how can this person perform better" to "which capability is limiting the result."

Strong leadership × Commercial architecture × Performance Capacity × Committed people = Better execution.