Ian Ahern, CEO of Stratature, Inc. had a goal of increasing revenue for his data dimension management software company by 100% in 2007. He didn’t quite get there… and that’s the good news. More on that later.
In Mid-2006, Ahern’s sales force did not have a documented sales process. Sellers were doing their own thing and executives did not know the true status of opportunities. Forecasting was based on “hope and gut” rather than the pass/fail of important process steps. Without a defined process, coaching from executive staff was based on opinion rather than best practices. Ahern worried that sellers were not performing best practices, but rather because “Ian’s process says so.” Ahern, instead, wanted everyone to work off one objective agreed-to best practices process.
Additionally, Ahern had put new sales people in place who had to ramp up quickly if the company was going to reach its financial goals. Like most companies, “product training” occurred independent of any “sales process” training effort. He knew they had to learn about Stratature’s offerings as well as the Stratature sales process at the same time. Ahern felt his product training should focus on how buyers will use Stratature’s features to overcome challenges, take care of issues, and reach goals. Without this sort of product training, each seller would be left to their own devices to translate feature-benefits to usage for their prospects.
To overcome these issues, Ahern brought in Adam Shapiro of MS Strategies, LLC, a certified CustomerCentric Systems affiliate. First, Shapiro worked with a small team of subject matter experts from Stratature to put together a common, agreed-to sales process – rather than just “Ian’s Law” – with a unified dictionary of terms that all would reference as sellers worked through opportunities. This sales process helped Ahern set expectations on 1) what tasks sales reps should perform and when, and 2) what information he sought from sellers when they briefed him and other executives on opportunities.
Next, to take care of the product training challenge, Shapiro then documented by industry and job title, who Stratature’s sellers should call on, and the highly predictable goals of those targeted titles. He then provided conversational tools - mostly questions - that would prompt Stratature’s sellers to be able to execute sales calls at the best practice level. These tools included how to:
1. Prospect by obtaining a targeted buyer’s business goals and exploring needs that relate to your offerings;
2. Diagnose each targeted buyer, so that sellers could extract the buyer’s issues that are currently preventing them from achieving those goals and that Stratature’s capabilities can help overcome;
3. Build value by architecting the questions for them that would uncover the financial impact of the issues;
4. Position Stratature’s offerings in ways that will help the buyer build a vision on how the USE of their offerings, will help the buyer achieve those goals.
In essence, these tools convert traditional product marketing/product training into product usage training, so salespeople could conversationally propose how customers use offerings to solve problems, instead of positioning what products do and get too deep into product “pitches.”
Ahern did worry that implementing CustomerCentric Selling would mean asking Sellers to do a lot of work “off-process” work in the form of pain sheets, pain chains, etc. His fears were allayed though after seeing that after making a choreographed sales call, sellers would learn how to write summaries back to prospects which include the goals identified, the current situation, the capabilities needed, the value of the solution and the next steps. Also, this letter writing activity would serve a dual purpose: a) it would help qualify the opportunity through the feedback (or lack thereof) from the prospect, and 2) it would provide sales, marketing and executive management with a feedback device on the quality and content of sales calls. The documentation of sales progress back to buyers, then, would also serve as a facilitation tool for both coaching and forecasting.
To roll out the new sales process and the product-usage toolkit, Stratature held a CustomerCentric Selling workshop which Shapiro led in early December 2006. Post workshop, Shapiro worked individually with each seller, troubleshooting particular opportunities and preparing them for sales calls to deepen the internalization of the CustomerCentric Selling methodology. Immediately, Stratature saw results. The first full quarter after training was the largest ever for new license revenue, a key metric. Total sales for that quarter exceeded all sales for the previous fiscal year. “With Adam’s help, our sales engine really kicked in that first quarter after training,” Ahern says.
Also, Stratature made its largest and most important sale - to Microsoft, Inc. “Through our adherence to the CCS diagnostic process, we were able to show Microsoft how critically important our tools could be to their data warehousing efforts.” Ahern adds.
Microsoft liked the technology so much they made a bid to buy all of Stratature, not just a software license. After negotiating hard and considering their options, Ahern and his fellow shareholders agreed to be purchased. “Our solution usually sits on top of those provided by our competitors – not so small companies like Business Objects, Microsoft and Cognos,” Ahern says, “I knew in the middle of 2006 that if we grew the company, one of them would find us pesky and useful enough to buy us. That was my ultimate goal. It just happened sooner than expected thanks, in part, to CustomerCentric Selling.”
