FedSources Doubles Their Number of Scheduled Demos One Week after Vorsight Workshop
Situation
FedSources, a Washington Management Group company, provides in-depth market intelligence, analysis and consulting services for companies who sell to the federal government. FedSources wanted to increase sales of their business intelligence service, so they tasked their new head of market intelligence, Tom Miller, to re-energize and increase the size of the sales team.
New Team Needed Phone Skills – Fast
Tom gave his new 13-person sales team leads from the company’s web site, events and tradeshows, as well as direct marketing campaigns. Tom worked with his team as they made their calls, and was concerned that they needed to quickly ramp up their sales skills in order to meet revenue goals.
The Dreaded Cold Call
Cold calling is not a pleasant exercise for even seasoned sales professionals, but when a team is new, it can be downright intimidating. Tom knew that his sales team would gain confidence if they knew how to prepare for each call. This meant conducting efficient company and contact research utilizing their CRM and the Internet.
Lots of Enthusiasm, Too Few Demos
Tom knew that FedSources had a strong brand and Sales had a good bank of leads to call, all they needed was a solid foundation so they could get to the decision makers and schedule demos. They couldn’t get many decision makers on the phone, and they didn’t know what to say to get them interested in a demo. One sales support member summed it up, “They were given a list and a phone, but needed to understand the steps to get a prospect to agree to a demo. The lack of activity wasn’t due to lack of enthusiasm, it was due to lack of know how.”
Enter Vorsight
Tom Miller brought in Vorsight, who pointed out that the FedSources team was making some very common mistakes that new inside sales professionals make:
- Calling leads they were given without a fundamental understanding of the contacts roles and responsibilities. Frequently, the listener would have a lack of interest and insufficient authority.
- Dismissing leads if the contact was not the decision maker. The prospect companies were good, but the team needed the crucial navigation skills to penetrate each company and locate the person with authority.
- “Moving in for the kill.” Rather than focusing on the call objective (scheduling demos) the team tried to sell on the phone, which caused them to lose opportunities rather than create them.
Obliterating Obstacles
“… I saw Steve Richard land a demo after making just one cold call!”
The team participated in two days of intensive Vorsight training. They listened as Steve Richard made live cold calls to actual prospects, which allowed them to hear first-hand how to take control of each call and land meetings. The class learned how to navigate prospect organizations using highly effective techniques to not only zero in on the decision maker, but to speak with them live on the phone. They learned how to get prospects interested – even excited - about scheduling a live demo. They also gained the skills to overcome objections, acquiring highly effective “second vendor” objection handling techniques that made a convincing case for scheduling a meeting. Vorsight also introduced a critical pre-sales process. Before making calls, the FedSources team discovered how to research companies online to find key information necessary to penetrate organizations in short order. They learned how to stop thinking of assistants and switchboard operators as gatekeepers and actually leverage them as rich sources of information. The FedSources sales team was now pumped and ready to hit the phones.
The Bottom Line
The results were swift and dramatic:
- Demo volume doubled after one week of training
- Sales cycle times decrease over time because the team now identifies decision makers and no longer wastes time talking to the wrong contacts
- The team revived old leads, and converted them to demos
“I am flooded with meetings and demos,” said Tom Miller.
Strengthening Processes
Vorsight helped to instill a new sales culture at FedSources; and each team member now shared best practices and success stories with each other. They revised their introductory sales pitches and circulated the best voicemail and email tactics. The team became highly supportive of each other, and increasingly motivated as the number of demos sharply increased in the weeks following training.
Vorsight also revamped Sales operations, and together with Tom Miller they streamlined the CRM data tracking process, making it easier for Tom to track leads in the pipeline and report successes to senior management.
