Sales Training Success: Archiva Successfully Executes a Unified, CustomerCentric Selling® Sales Process Differentiating from Competitors and Improving Performance.
Key Player
VP of Sales & Marketing
Goals
Archiva, a leader in electronic document management services based in Italy, dealt with the primary issue of market commoditization. Archiva had been a leading and innovative company in the digital archiving market for awhile, but after eight to ten successful years, many competitors started offering what seemed to be the same services at a very aggressive price. More expensive, high quality services began to become difficult to sell in the growing, competitive marketplace.
Massimiliano Mastrotto, Vice President of Sales and Marketing for Archiva, began working with Iano Cobianchi, a CustomerCentric Selling® (CCS®) Business Partner in 2010 to improve performance of Archiva’s sales organization to both gain and sustain competitive edge in the marketplace. Some of the business goals Mr. Mastrotto identified included:
- Empowering the sales force
- Unifying the sales organization with a single language and methodology via a common framework and process
- Reducing the selling cycle
- Increasing pipeline value
Capabilities Needed
After a careful analysis of the sales organization, Mr. Mastrotto and Iano concluded he needed to provide his team with the following capabilities:
- A consistent, repeatable sales process, that: 1) sales people can be taught to execute with confidence; 2) management can be taught to monitor, coach, and inspect; 3) represents Archiva’s best sales practices.
- Sales tools/templates and CustomerCentric (Sales Ready) Messaging® that allows salespeople to converse and diagnose executive’s business issues with bias toward Archiva’s offerings and capabilities.
- The ability to define with the buyer the steps in the evaluation process, what has to happen and when, that would allow the buyer to make an informed purchase decision and shorten the sales cycle.
CustomerCentric Selling® provided Archiva with all of these capabilities that addressed each of Mr. Mastrotto’s goals, helping to continually improve sales performance and sustain leadership in the marketplace. Since their first implementation in 2010, Mr. Mastrotto’s sales organization has attended and successfully completed the CustomerCentric Selling® workshop, Sales Ready Messaging® (CustomerCentric Messaging®) workshop, Prospecting and Business Development™ workshop, and CCS® Refresher workshop. The key components and tools of the CCS® sales process that have proved especially helpful to Archiva’s sales organization include:
- Solution Development Prompter™
- Champion Letter
- Negotiation Skills Worksheet
“Selling is 80% preparation and 20% opportunity. Starting from this point, I think CCS® is a very comprehensive, extremely logical and simple way to prepare sales actions and to think before doing anything. Every part of the sales cycle is clearly inserted into a complete framework that connects sourcing phase, sales skills, tools and messaging. If I had to make changes in a company, I’d find it very difficult to manage a sales team not using this method. A CCS® training budget would be the first thing I’d ask if I had to start with a news sales group.”
–Massimilano Mastrotto,
VP of Sales & Marketing,
Archiva
Results:
- Alignment of all sales reps to the same language and methodology
- Standardization of the pipeline
- Unified process by which to share tools (presentations, prompters, offers, objection handling, etc.)
- New way of conceiving and presenting both new and old services
- Competitive differentiation in the marketplace using customer-centric selling behavior with buyers
- Improved negotiation outcomes using the CustomerCentric Selling® process
Customer Closeup
Archiva, based in Italy, is a leader in electronic document management services, freeing information from its physical dimension and making content available anytime and anywhere in a fast, reliable and secure manner. Their services, always current and compliant with recent laws, simplify the flow of information, streamline bureaucratic procedures, facilitate the consultations archive, and optimize management systems and transmittal of data into business processes. Learn more at http://www.archivagroup.it
For any questions about this case study or client, please contact CCS® Business Partner, Iano Cobianchi: icobianchi@customercentric.com.
About CustomerCentric Selling® – The Sales Training Company
CustomerCentric Selling® (CCS®) is a proven methodology for predictably improving revenue growth and sales performance. Founded in 2002, CCS® helps clients worldwide to implement repeatable, auditable and scalable sales processes that, when combined with CustomerCentric Messaging® (Sales Ready Messaging®), guides marketing and sales to have meaningful conversations with customers and prospects. This results in winning high-value deals, retaining and growing client relationships and improving the predictability and accuracy of sales forecasts.
CustomerCentric Selling® is regularly named to the Top Sales Training Companies list. Clients such as Microsoft, Hewlett Packard, Business Objects, Rockwell Automation, EMC and Raytheon have deployed CCS® worldwide. For more information, visit www.customercentric.com or email Jill Perez: jperez@customercentric.com.