Sales Training Success: CustomerCentric Selling® helps VersionOne achieve significant results by more than doubling its sales in one year.
Key Player
VP of Sales
Goals
VersionOne offers its software development project management tools through a sales organization of now 26 people, including sales representatives, product specialists, sales operations and executives. VersionOne had several sales challenges which it sought to overcome by implementing CustomerCentric Selling®. For example, the sales organization needed a process for ramping up new sales people quickly to reduce the time from hire to first sale. The sales team sought a common language or way to effectively describe capabilities. Additionally, they needed a best practice to adequately process inbound requests from prospects. VersionOne also wanted to address the following concerns:
Current Situation
The marketplace was state and county governments. An initial analysis uncovered the following barriers to achieving his goal:
- How do we adequately train and coach our existing and new sales force when we are running around growing the business?
- If we are going to grow personnel and sales, we need to codify our best practices and learn how to repeat them and coach them. When are we going to do that?
- Are we saying the right things at the appropriate time in the sales or recruitment process?
- Many of our leads are inbound, so they are either already looking at someone else like us or we are the first on a list – how do we distinguish ourselves and conduct appropriate discussions?
- How well are we tracking our opportunities?
Solving these combined challenges would directly impact VersionOne’s revenue potential.
Capabilities Needed
VersionOne’s sales and marketing team began working with Adam Shapiro, CustomerCentric Selling® (CCS®) Business Partner by building an initial sales-ready messaging kit of scripts, success stories and conversation prompters. Later, they held three CCS® workshops, all led by Shapiro. With Adam’s help and the capabilities the CCS® methodology provided, VersionOne immediately saw positive results.
Result
The salespeople were able to arm themselves with messaging tools that they could then utilize throughout each step of the sales process. These tools are especially helpful in knowing how to effectively qualify or disqualify a prospect early in the process. CustomerCentric Selling® was also able to help VersionOne define a common language for how they can discuss opportunities as an organization. Most importantly, the new methodology helped VersionOne create a process for working through opportunities that honors what buyers need in order to make a purchasing decision, while also setting them apart from competitors. The net results of this CustomerCentric Selling® implementation have been remarkable – VersionOne more than doubled its sales in just one year.
Richard Fuller, Vice President of Sales for VersionOne states, “Demand for our products were clearly ahead of our sales capacity prior to CustomerCentric Selling® (CCS). We needed a process that recognized the value of consistent messaging, the demands of a consultative sale and the realization that our buyers are well-educated and well-informed. With CCS, we received all of this in a highly effective, repeatable process that helped us quadruple our sales team in less than one year.”
VersionOne CEO, Robert Holler also credits the hands-on guidance they received throughout their implementation by stating, “Adam is one of the few I have met with truly exceptional insight into sales messaging and the sales process. As we scale, it is beneficial to have someone to turn to for assistance with training and messaging. We subscribe to the CustomerCentric Selling® sales methodology and Adam just happens to be one of the best I have seen at helping teams reach their potential through the associated best practices.”
Customer Closeup
VersionOne is recognized by Agile practitioners as the leader in Agile project management tools. By simplifying the process of planning and tracking Agile software projects, VersionOne helps development teams consistently deliver software faster. Since 2002, companies such as Adobe, BBC, Siemens, Disney, Dow Chemical, IBM, Lockheed Martin, Sony, 3M and Business Objects have turned to VersionOne to help provide greater value to their customers. Today more than 10,000 teams and 70,000 users in 50 countries use VersionOne’s Agile project management tools to streamline and standardize their Agile development efforts. VersionOne offers the most feature-rich, easy-to-use Agile project management tools available. No other Agile project management tool gives more visibility into and confidence in the software development process
Benefits to VersionOne:
- Doubled sales in just one year by codifying best practices
- Common language and defined sales process to navigate throught opportunities
- Shortened ramp-up time of new sales reps and greater time optimization
- Messaging tools to guide through each step of the sales process
- Better qualification of prospects
Using VersionOne, all project stakeholders – project managers, developers, testers, product owners, customers and software executives – can work together to easily coordinate project plans, priorities and progress.
More information on VersionOne can be found at www.versionone.com
For any questions about this client, please contact Adam Shapiro at ashapiro@customercentric.com
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.