A Sandler South West Success Story: How Cobalt Communications Built a Consistent Sales Process and Achieved 40% Year-on-Year Growth
Client: Cobalt Communications
Location: Exeter
Sector: IT, Telecommunications, Business Services
Size: 20+ employees
Who is Cobalt?
Cobalt Communications is an Exeter-based IT and telecommunications supplier for businesses across the South West, co-founded by Jim Taylor and Ian Dunstan in 2009.
As Cobalt boasts a competitive edge by providing 3-in-1 solutions and ongoing IT support for small-to-medium sized enterprises, there is a demand for sales skills within their organisation. On top of being the Managing Director, Jim started Cobalt as the sole sales representative, relying on his 10+ years of management at the time to drive the company’s performance.
Challenge:
As Cobalt scaled up, it became necessary for Jim to expand his team by taking on more salespeople. But without a unified selling process between the team and a robust hiring process, Jim had to let go of two of his new employees. Jim then reached out to Sandler South West to discuss how we can support business development and sales leadership.
Solution:
Jim enrolled in our Sales Development Series course to help him learn the Sandler selling methodology and apply that knowledge to his new salespeople to improve their effectiveness. This involved a mix of online Essentials training sessions and 1-2-1 coaching with our South West team.
“What made Sandler unique for me was the methodology that it brought,” Jim Taylor says. “It helped me from day one in delivering more of a process-driven way of hosting my first, second and closing appointments.”He then progressed to our Sales Leader Growth Series training, which, along with our profiling, provided him with the tools necessary to successfully take on and develop a new Sales Manager.
He subsequently enrolled them into our Sales Development Series course, which they completed in June 2025.
Result:
Jim has reported a 40% increase in his Sales figures throughout the two-year training period. The team has also demonstrated improved communication with different customer types from small-to-medium sized businesses, selling directly to managing directors, IT, and finance directors.
Jim has also reported personal successes by using our profiling solutions and techniques to support team development.
“Everybody can benefit from sales training,” Jim Taylor says. “It doesn’t matter what you sell or even who you're selling to. What matters is having a whole team that understands and talks the same language. So when I'm talking in a sales meeting on what I want the sales team to focus on in the coming month, everybody understands what I mean, what the question actually means that I'm asking, and how I expect them to apply it.”If you'd like to find out more about how our sales solutions can benefit you and your company, feel free to fill out the form below and we can arrange a discovery call.