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Sales Training Success: Tridium beats its own growth plan by 30% using the power of the CustomerCentric Selling® methodology.

Key Player
CEO

Goal
In order to convert this group of partners into a high-growth revenue channel, Tridium CEO John Petze began working with CustomerCentric Selling® Business Partner, Ben Zoldan. His primary goal was to increase revenue and sales.

“When Ben first made contact with me,” Petze stated, “I conveyed that we were facing a plan to grow top-line revenue by 30%. This had already been committed to our Board, however, 4Q results were lackluster and did not show a trend line that would match that growth.”

Current Situation
Several key obstacles were uncovered that had been preventing the Tridium sales staff from achieving their aggressive growth plans. They were:

  • Spending too much time on opportunities that never produced business.
  • Having difficulty helping customers and partners understand why they needed Tridium’s technology and how to use it.
  • It was virtually impossible to understand where the company stood in the sales process with respect to its sales opportunities
  • All of the company’s sales people seemed to use a different language to describe the process.
  • Though the company had notable successes with a number of early adopters, the difficulty of replicating that success with new accounts and achieving success with the mainstream market was surprising.

Capabilities Needed
Tridium and CustomerCentric Selling® set out to:

  1. Standardize a channel development process for Tridium salespeople to follow and repeat, which included how their sellers would recruit new potential partners, assess their progress, and, then, how they would provide sales, marketing and operational support resources on an ongoing basis.
  2. Through a series of internal workshops, transfer the skills needed to their channel salespeople, so they could execute the process. These skills, at their core, included how they would convert what were previously, very technical conversations with technical buyers, into business-level discussions their salespeople could conduct, so executives at the highest level would understand the potential value of their offerings.
  3. Once they transferred those skills to their salespeople internally, they needed to accomplish the same externally. Tridium developed a customized “How to sell the Tridium Framework” workshop for their channel partners’ salespeople to attend. Tridium and CustomerCentric Selling® worked together for several months to customize this course and developed realistic sales scenarios specific to their target market’s needs. The combination of CustomerCentric Selling® lecture and Tridium-coached breakout sessions allow attendees to not only learn the methodology, but also practice new skills that are 100 percent relevant to their sales interactions.

CustomerCentric Selling® provided Tridium with these capabilities. Tridium adopted CustomerCentric Selling® with the goal of starting early enough in the year to see results and hit its aggressive plan.

Result
Results the company had seen by fourth quarter, included:

  • Beating its growth plan by 30% in the first two quarters since working with Zoldan and CustomerCentric Selling®.
  • The entire team follows CustomerCentric Selling®, so the company is in control of the process and knows where it stands with accounts and what the next steps are.
  • By Tridium salespeople following the process, customers have stated that Tridium is a far more organized company compared to other vendors. Consequently, Tridium has won several new customers, which previously decided not to do business with them or “stalled-out.”

According to Petze, “Overall, the impact of CustomerCentric Selling® has exceeded my expectations and changed our company for the better. The financial results are there, the salespeople see the value and the company presents a better image to customers: they see us as helping them address their needs and goals.”

Customer Closeup
Tridium, Inc. is in the business of helping their customers increase operational efficiencies and lower labor and energy costs throughout the enterprise by making it easy to manage the smart devices that operate their facilities. Tridium is the inventor of the Niagara Framework™, a software framework that integrates diverse systems and devices-regardless of manufacturer, or communication protocol-into a unified platform that can be easily managed and controlled in real time over the Internet. Today, Niagara is being successfully applied in the building automation, industrial automation, energy management and M2M markets through a network of independent systems integrators and partnerships with leading suppliers.

More information on Tridium, Inc. can be found at www.tridium.com.

If you have questions about this client, please contact Ben Zoldan at bzoldan@customercentric.com.

Results:

  • Beat growth plan by 30% in the first two quarters post-implementation
  • Common language and set of tools to guide the sales process for salespeople
  • Improved, organized business that has attracted higher number of new clients

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.