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Reference Stories
Corporate Presentation Materials
Sales Coaching
Marketing Consulting
Affected business description:
The client provides high-end, customized printed presentation materials to corporate users in the United States. The client’s customer base is Fortune 2000 companies, typically marketing and sales departments.
Business problem or business opportunity:
The sales organization consisted of a group of telephone sales representatives and a small field sales organization. Leads were generated by marketing initiatives and handed over to the telephone organization to qualify and close. Large opportunities were handled by the field sales organization.
Leadership desired to increase the efficiency of the marketing organization as well as the sales organization.
Why did this problem happen?
The business grew rapidly at its inception because of the unique blend of products and services it created. Entrepreneurial activity was high, centered on a charismatic and highly-personable leader. As the organization grew, this responsibility needed to be absorbed by the sales department.
Size also indicated a need for specialization between the sales and marketing functions and the need to plan promotional activities aggressively. The client used catalogs for promotional purposes, but the catalog design and creation cycle was lengthy.
What did the client want?
Prior to Business Performance Group’s involvement, the client hired a sales training organization to provide telephone sales training. The client wanted to assist the sales manager in driving revenue, in implementing the new sales training and in defining and executing marketing initiatives to provide leads.
What did Business Performance Group’s product provide?
Business Performance Group integrated the sales training into a coaching initiative for the salespeople and the sales manager. This included writing and implementing Personal Business Plans and metrics for the entire sales team.
Using shadowing and call taping, each representative was coached on sales skills and the application of their training to the job.
A Business Performance Group consultant met with the marketing team to create a lead generation strategy. The strategy was determined from the company’s customer data and assembled into a six month series of promotions with individually measured results. A budget was prepared and approved by management.
As each marketing promotion was created, the sales group was trained on the promotion and expected results. Using features-functions-benefits and questions, the marketing “functions” were related to “questions” the sales group could ask to pre-qualify the lead. Targets were set for each promotion and the results were measured and analyzed.
Finally, the field sales group was brought into the lead mix and their results incorporated into the initiative.
End result:
During the campaign, goals were established for new customer acquisition and lead conversion. Six months into the campaign, new business plans were created and territories established given the earlier results. Several large orders were captured and the client’s revenues met expectations during the period of the campaign.