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Reference Stories
Enterprise Software and Hardware Organization
High-Impact Customer Service
Leading High-Impact Sales
Outsource Services
Customization Services
Facilitation Services
Affected business description:
The client is a business unit within a Fortune 50 organization with global reach selling computer software and hardware for specialty applications in the entertainment industry. The market consists of approximately 7,000 entertainment and communication businesses serving market areas as well as small entities deploying the hardware and software for specialty applications.
Business problem or business opportunity:
Marketing generated several thousand inbound calls per day into the client’s call center. These calls presented opportunities to cross-sell and up-sell the organization’s products and services.
Why did this problem happen?
Because of the high cost of the field sales organization, the business decided to reduce the head count dramatically in that department and to depend on marketing to drive leads to the sales engineers. This caused a decline in lead volume and the resulting revenue.
What did the client want?
The client wanted a “third way” between a “marketing only” approach to lead generation and the expense of a field sales force.
What did Business Performance Group’s product provide?
Initially Business Performance Group provided consulting services to determine the best business model for the company. It was determined telephone selling would offer an affordable “third way” alternative for lead generation. The client did not want to manage the telephone sales group and therefore, an outsource alternative was selected at Business Performance Group’s home office in Des Moines, Iowa.
Of concern was the interface between the outsourced sales group and the sales engineers. The company wanted to avoid any issues that could arise in the handoffs between the groups and wanted to assure the telephone salespeople did not misrepresent the technical aspects of the complex products.
Business Performance Group provided Leading High-Impact Sales to the management team of the initiative at the client site and High-Impact Customer Service to the sales engineers.
Business processes were designed to accommodate tying the remote locations together.
End result:
During the first year, leads were generated whose proposals equaled 34% of the revenues of the company. The client deployed a web-driven sales presentation tool which became the “next step” after interest was generated by the telephone sales group.
Although the marketplace was competitive and product emphasis was switched several times during the first year, cost-of-sales managed to fall within the client’s aggressive parameters.