A Sandler Success Story: Building a Confident, Consultative Sales Team at Thomson Reuters
Client: Thomson Reuters
Location: Exeter
Sector: Tax and Accounting
Size: 30,000+ employees worldwide
About Thomson Reuters
Thomson Reuters supports professionals with trusted content, advanced technology, and deep subject‑matter expertise. For more than 150 years, the organisation has helped customers navigate complexity, make confident decisions, and adapt to a rapidly changing world.
Karen Buckley is a Strategic Account Manager for the UK‑based Digita brand and manages its largest customer. Prior to this role, she led the retention and renewals team for over 20 years.
Challenge:
Thomson Reuters identified opportunities to strengthen capability and consistency within its sales function. Key focus areas included adopting a structured sales methodology, improving lead qualification, increasing confidence in cold calling, and developing a more consultative approach to customer conversations.
“People don’t always want to speak with you, and that can affect confidence," Karen says. "It’s a demanding role.”
Solution:
Karen and members of the wider management team attended an initial discovery meeting and taster session to assess alignment with Sandler South West.
“From the outset, it was clear the Sandler South West team had invested time in understanding our business,” says Karen. “The conversation flowed naturally, and it quickly felt like the start of a strong partnership.”
Karen enrolled in a range of Sandler sales and leadership programmes, beginning with the Sales Development Series. Core concepts included:
Establishing clear up‑front contracts to create focused, productive conversations
Applying the Sandler Sales Cookbook to bring structure, discipline, and accountability to the sales process
Strengthening questioning techniques to uncover genuine customer pain points
Creating a shared sales language to support coaching, performance reviews, and management discussions
Karen later progressed to the Emerging Leaders programme alongside other senior managers. Key outcomes included:
Adopting a more flexible leadership style
Increased confidence in decision‑making
Greater ownership and accountability within teams
Improved delegation and coaching effectiveness
The Results
“Sandler helped us adopt a more consultative sales approach, focusing on real pain points and stronger processes,” says Karen. “Sales is still challenging, but having a clear framework gave us confidence and led to higher‑quality opportunities.”
Karen Buckley
Strategic Account Manager, Thomson Reuters
Whether you want to build clearer communication, stronger culture, more accountability across your team, or strengthen your team’s sales and leadership processes, Sandler South West is here to help.
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