The Case Study:
The Challenge
One of the largest e-security firms contacted us to help them move from transactional-based selling to an enterprise-level approach. The company “grew up” selling security tokens, a business where they had the majority market share and had matured and grown to become a more transactional sale. They developed a collection of new products, authentication and web-access, that required a sales force with enterprise level skill sets – a more complex and sophisticated sales effort and a longer sales cycle.
The Solution
At JBK, we developed and implemented a new Opportunity Management process for the organization to qualify and execute on more complex selling campaigns. The process helped to deliver the skill sets needed to sell effectively at the enterprise level – prioritize top accounts, communicate and discuss sales strategies, and align the right marketing messages with the new sales objectives. We formally introduced the process in a series of sales conference presentations. We delivered a series of workshops worldwide to implement the process within the organization. To ensure the implementation took hold and became common practice in the organization, we involved senior leadership in understanding and supporting the process, and first and second line management in coaching the process. We also involved the product marketing organization in producing product training and documentation that supported the kinds of higher level calling that these new enterprise products required.
The Results
Today, the process is used throughout the world by our client, who continues to maintain and even enhance the process. The organization attributes a higher win-ratio for those key sales campaigns that go through the process, and field managers now have a common language and a common process for managing the strategic business opportunities that are most critical.