The Client at-a-Glance
Anixter is a leading global supplier of
communications and
security products, electrical and
electronic wire and cable,
fasteners and other small components. Anixter helps its customers specify solutions and make informed purchasing decisions around
technology, applications and relevant standards. Throughout the world, Anixter provides innovative
supply chain management services to reduce its customers' total cost of production and implementation.
With Wonderlic : 1 year
Year Founded: 1957
Employees: 8,000
Revenues: Exceed $5.8 billion
Products: 400,000
Inventory: $1 billion
Customers: 95,000
Awards and Honors: Fortune Magazine's Fortune 500, Most Admired Companies, Forbes Magazine's Best Managed Company
The Client Success
As a supply chain leader in the technical space, Anixter’s revenue is driven by a sales team whose success depends on a thorough understanding of technical process combined with an extensive knowledge of Anixter product offerings and their associated vendors. Anixter provides extensive, in-depth sales training (6 month – 1 year learning curve), but Anixter’s Director of Human Resources, Mike McDaniel, identified a high rate of salesperson turn-over (within the first year) in a subset of the sales team – the inside sales group of 700.
A fifteen-year professional in Human Resources within the technology industry, McDaniel began researching a cognitive assessment solution to predict on-the-job success and attack the turnover rate, which led him to Wonderlic. McDaniel was attracted to Wonderlic’s 70-year history in talent acquisition systems, the depth of job analysis provided by on-staff I.O. Psychologists, and the online candidate assessment solutions, offering turnkey implementation and tracking.
Since implementing Wonderlic
employee retention solutions a year ago (2007), sales turnover was reduced year-over-year in 2008.
“Our turnover rate among inside sales people in their first year with Anixter - the target of our Wonderlic effort in 2008 - dropped from 30.5% in 2007 to 17.1% in 2008. Through further analysis of our turnover, and discussions with hiring managers across the country, we could see clearly that our candidate selection process had improved remarkably with the implementation of the WPT.”
Mike McDaniel, Director of Human Resources, Anixter.
The cost savings for Anixter is substantial when you calculate new-hire training costs (including the $1400 per person 4-day rapid start program), the ongoing training by sales managers versus attacking new growth opportunities, the revenue costs from those empty desks, and the satisfaction level of existing employees who have assumed the work created by the open positions
