Sales Training Success: Imation skillfully leverages CustomerCentric Selling® to grow revenue, improve forecast accuracy and reduce ramp-up time.
Key Player
Sales Management, Imation
Goal
Debra Swann, a CustomerCentric Selling® business partner, engaged with the Printing & Publishing Systems business unit of Imation Corporation. Other business units within Imation also produce products used by printers, such as data storage solutions, but there was not a focused effort to pursue this business. Imation then established a separate division solely dedicated to selling the complete Imation offering to the largest global printing companies. A team of twenty of Imation’s most successful salespeople was assigned to this division. Imation’s primary goal was to increase revenue by 50% within the named printing accounts during the upcoming year in a market that was flat or declining.
Current Situation
The challenges Imation faced in reaching its goals were:
- The sales team had historically sold commodity products into specific printer departments and differentiated themselves by providing “value-added” services at no charge. In their new assignments, they were required to get up to speed on new high tech offerings, call into unfamiliar departments, and charge for services that they had previously given away. Ramp-up time was critical in order to achieve the aggressive revenue target.
- Salespeople were more comfortable speaking with the users of the products and not as effective at conversing with, and developing a solid business case for, executive-level decision makers.
- Each salesperson had their ‘own’ process for grading pipeline opportunities, making it difficult to prepare an accurate sales forecast.
Capabilities Needed
After working with Imation’s sales management to define the challenges and establish goals, Debra confirmed these capabilities that Imation expressed as required needs:
- A standardized process for helping salespeople quickly learn about new customer types and products, determine and gain access to those involved in the buying process, and qualify/disqualify opportunities early in the sell cycle.
- The ability for salespeople to facilitate discussions throughout the prospect’s organization to quantify the “as is” business environment and the “projected” improvement upon implementation of their company’s products/services.
- A consistent, auditable grading system for classifying pipeline opportunities that could be used to prepare more objective sales forecasts.
CustomerCentric Selling® provided Imation with all of these defined capabilities.
Results
After conducting a customized CustomerCentric Selling® Workshop with this new sales team, Debra worked with Imation to determine the results of this sales process implementation, which included:
- Ramp-up time was reduced from 90 to 45 days.
- Forecast accuracy improved significantly.
- In the first six months, revenue growth was +24%, up from a baseline run rate of +5%.
Following the success of CustomerCentric Selling® with the initial group of twenty salespeople, Imation went on to train their entire team consisting of 150 sales and marketing professionals.
Customer Closeup
The Printing & Publishing Systems business unit of Imation Corporation provides a full line of graphic arts equipment and supplies to help commercial printers produce high quality black-and-white and color output.
Imation is a leading global developer and marketer of branded products that enable people to capture, save and enjoy digital information. Imation’s world-class portfolio of digital storage products, audio and video electronics, and accessories reaches customers through a powerful global distribution network. The goal is a company with strong commercial and consumer businesses and continued long-term growth and profitability that creates shareholder value.
Imation common stock is traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the trading symbol “IMN.”
For more information about Imation, please see: http://www.imation.com/en/
If you have questions about this client, please contact Debra Swann with SDK Alliance at dswann@customercentric.com or +1.407.671.5351.
Benefits to Imation:
- Ramp-up time reduced from 90 to 45 days
- Significantly improved forecasting accuracy
- Increase in revenue growth by 24% from a baseline run rate of 5%
About CustomerCentric Selling®
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 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 Raython have deployed CCS® worldwide. For more information, vist www.customercentric.com, or call Jill Perez at 800.993.1228, ext.706.