case study
Bringing sales practices, metrics & KPIs, and sales training brought immediate increases in sales performance.
Overview
The company is a $50million/year software vendor targeting the financial services industry with a 7 person sales force.
Sales have been mostly flat for the last three years with 87% of sales coming from existing customers renewing, and nearly half of all new sales coming from up-sales to existing customers.
Key Challenge
The CEO said the #1 Sales initiative for him was to increase the number of clients served and bring in more sales from totally new customers. To that end, SOMAmetrics prepared a sales plan designed to double sales from new customers within the next 12 months.
What We Did
Alicia Assefa, principal consultant at SOMAmetrics was retained as Interim Sales Director to build the sales team in to a highly effective sales organization. She immediately began to transform the sales organization as follows:
1) Individual GOSPA’s
Each team member was required to prepare their individual Goals, Objectives, Strategies, Programs, and Activities list that would enable them to reach their targeted financial goals. This became a key motivator and focusing tool for each member.
2) Focused Messaging
Working with the top performing sales rep, Alicia developed the core messaging and variants to use on sales emails, calls, and voice mails. Prior to this, each rep had his or her own version of the company messaging resulting in inconsistent messaging and sales results
3) Clearly Defined Sales Process
Alicia then reviewed and streamlined the sales process, with two focused versions—one for the larger field sales deals, and another for the smaller inside sales deals. Each stage in the sales process had clearly defined requirements that must be met prior to moving to the next stage, reducing the number of proposals that were sent too early or to the wrong people, thereby getting stalled with no sales results.
4) Advanced SPIN Selling Training
Alicia then trained the team on SPIN Selling—one of the most effective sales methodologies for selling solutions to non-customers. This was the first time the entire sales team was using the same sales process and tools.
5) Metrics and KPIs
Each team member now had a set number of weekly activities– calls, emails, and demos– that he or she must meet towards increasing sales pipeline and closed sales.
6) Weekly Pipeline Reviews
Alicia sat with each team member each week and reviewed their pipeline, going through each sales opportunity, assessing where it was, whether it had a reasonable chance of moving forward, revising closing dates, and otherwise ensuring her quarterly forecasts are accurate.
7) Salesforce.com Revamp
To support the new sales process, SOMAmetrics revamped the company’s salesforce.com instance, moving it to Lightning version, built necessary forecasts, reports and dashboard the each rep and Leadership Team needed to ensure success.
Results
In the first 90 days, the company saw a dramatic improvement in all major sales metrics. With outbound call activities going up 620% that was backed with a more effective messaging, voicemail, and email sales touches, the other sales metrics such as demos, Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs).
Sales pipeline grew by 246% and average number of deals closed per month also went up 67%.
At Project Start | 90 Days Later | ||
Average calls per week | 25 | 180 | 620% |
Average SQLs per month | 22 | 28 | 27% |
Number of demos (per month) | 28 | 37 | 32% |
Sales Pipeline (Monthly Sales $) | 46 | 159 | 246% |
Average Closed deals per month | 3 | 5 | 67% |
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