sales-strategy

Amplify Effective Sales Process

The founder of a commercial building product manufacturer built a company that was successful for many years. However, operating as a single rainmaker, he had reached the limit of the accounts he could service, plateauing growth. Faced with a market opportunity and desire to continue to grow the business, he needed to add salespeople to the team and onboard them to his successful sales process while providing them with needed tools.  

We conducted extensive interviews with the founder to identify the lead generation and sales closing process he had been using. Based on the sessions, we documented the founder’s process including audiences, referral sources, profile of businesses to sell directly, and productive trade shows. We looked for a technology solution that would support the process, fit within the budget, sustain a range of technical mastery for salespeople and maximize time spent in front of clients. Once selected, we configured the system to support the step-by-step lead generation and closing processes, and inputted all available data from the founder’s own historical database. With the data loaded, we built out dashboards and reports that were actionable. Regular training and coaching sessions were launched to get users up to speed on how to use the tool and show what it could do for them.

With a sales process rooted in years of success, the new salespeople were able to hit the ground running, leveraging a tool that supported their work. The founder was able to replicate himself and institutionalize his experience. Quickly the company was exceeding its growth goals by 75%.

sales-strategy

Relationships Crucial to Growth

Our client, a professional services firm with 25+ offices nationwide, developed a strategic growth plan with its primary lever being lateral acquisition of firms and solo practitioners with existing books of business.  Successful execution needed an aligned definition of a qualified acquisition target, and the organizational capabilities and resources to support the Principals tasked with the work across all the markets.

We developed a customized relationship management program to identify and attract pre-qualified target firms. The first step was to build a profile of the ideal acquisition target with an understanding of how likely the firm would be open to the conversation as well as the assets/revenue it would bring. We did this by engaging industry professionals to research and outreach to targets narrowing the prospect list from 200k to 10k. From the qualified prospects we developed personalized background dossiers and talking points for the Principals in each market. Leveraging the dossiers the Principal would then begin the process of developing a relationship with the prospect over multiple of meetings. Each Principal was having four meetings a month and managing 50 relationships over time. Additionally, we rolled out an internal tracking system to log interactions, trigger follow-up and generate reporting across the organization.

The customized acquisition target list and standardized process allowed the Principals to effectively focus their time on recruiting rather than prospecting. The internal buy-in to the program was strong with testimonials from the Principals on their success building relationships and achieving targets. The program enabled firm to deliver its lateral acquisition goal, a critical lever in the growth plan.

sales-strategy

Focused Lead Generation Drives Growth

Our client, a business-to-business solutions provider, relied on organic lead generation to grow the business.  However, with plans to accelerate growth, this would not deliver the results.  Several approaches were tried without the desired outcomes. First a SEO campaign was initiated to jump start leads; it was costly and generated unqualified inquiries which required the team’s follow-up. The next effort was to outsource to a call center and again this was costly and did not generate qualified leads despite the client investing considerable time and resources over time to training the call center team.   

Through a series of discovery sessions, we developed an in-house outbound lead generation team supported by a lead generation module added to an existing a CRM system. The program encompassed job descriptions, interviewing guides, orientation and training materials to ensure the team understand the services they would be selling.  Additionally, a call process, scripts and FAQs were created to navigate the both call and relationship. The team was provided targeted list of pre-qualified leads, consisting of companies with problems we knew the client’s services could solve.

The in-house program allowed the client control and cost was in line with other methods with better results. The firm’s salespeople were able to redirect their time to closing leads rather than following up on unqualified leads. With the implementation of the in-house program the client was regularly getting 20 qualified leads a month and closing two new clients a month delivering the accelerated growth targets.

sales-strategy

Relationships Crucial to Expanding Market

The Founder & CEO of a rapidly growing creative design firm and her partner were the sole drivers of client acquisition for their company. This prevented them from being as present as they needed to be in the company’s operations. The firm hadn’t grown enough to justify hiring a full-time business development person—what they needed was a support system to help them organize, prioritize and capitalize on their important relationships.  

Through our REALationships™ program, we identified the individual relationships—past clients, referrers, connectors and others—that had contributed most to their success. We created systematic, authentic 1-to-1 messages for the Founder and her partner to use to build and maintain rapport with those key individuals. What’s more, we strategically identified individuals who were poised to help them expand into larger, more competitive markets and created unique roadmaps to help them connect with those people.

Within 12 months, our activity rekindled pre-existing and initiated new relationships that allowed our clients to close the three largest deals in their company’s history. Our efforts also enabled them to foster rapport with referrers and potential clients that hadn’t been contacted in years. And, because we performed the administrative aspects of initiating and developing those critical relationships, our clients were able to spend more or their own time on face-to-face activities. Additionally, we built and maintained a CRM system to track their outreach activities.

sales-strategy

Maximize Potential of High-Value Relationships

The area president of a national business services outsourcing firm was overseeing a rapidly growing division. His personal success, and by extension, the success of his company, hinged upon maintaining strong relationships with referrers, prospective clients, existing clients and the contracted consultants that served them. With an increasing number of consultants and clients under his responsibility, it was becoming difficult to maintain quality relationships with all of these groups.

We analyzed each of these groups of people and, through our REALationships™ program, began to segment and set measurable goals for each relationship type. We facilitated discovery sessions that allowed us to document our client’s communication style and relationship history. Then, we developed a strategic plan to help him build and maintain rapport with each of the key individuals in his universe.

By the end of the first year, our client exceeded his revenue acquisition goal by 20%, and his client retention goal by 50%.