COMPANY OVERVIEW
Name: TDS Metrocom
Industry: Communications (CLEC)
Client Since: July 2004
Training Areas Covered:
A. Sales Competency & Performance Metric Awareness
B. ‘Top-down’ Appointment Strategy
C. Setting ‘Targeted’ business appointments
D. Identifying and achieving weekly activity goals
Training Objective:
Improve participants Conversation-to-appointment ratio
Improve number of new appointments
Set appointments with ‘Targeted’ decision makers to increase Results
I. The Challenge
TDS Metrocom had recently developed a tactical sales process flow starting with the 1 st appointment and was getting good results.
But they were lacking an adequate number of sales appointments throughout their Midwest selling regions. They were looking for way to gain entry into small, medium and large enterprise businesses more routinely and spending less time in achieving it.
In addition, they were seeking a methodology to transition from a ‘Bottom-up’ sales approach to a ‘Top-down’ strategy to initiate their current solution-based selling process.
Added to this challenge, their Tier 2 and Tier 3 markets contained many like-type competitors, all vying for the same prospects. Communications is a mature market from the business prospect vantage point. Sales reps have difficulty separating ‘Conditions’ from ‘Objections’.
Secondarily, they had recently acquired a company and were interested in having one singular prospecting method across all sales regions.
JDH Group Assessment: (Cons) Extremely competitive market with most competitors strategic offering based on saving money. No current methodology or process for targeted prospecting in place. Business people with ‘Fiscal authority’ normally do not sit down with telecommunications reps.
They currently were ineffective as a group with a 9% Conversation-to-appointment ratio, spending too much time to get too little results.
(Pros) Client service suite had a measurable benefit for small and medium size businesses, with both hard and soft dollars. Management supported a ‘Mentorship’ sales Culture. Sales leadership was open to a systematic approach to prospecting tied to results and was willing to lead a process to achieve it.
II. The Strategy
JDH Group’s X2 ROI Survey diagnostic process showed that the TDS sales team needed to improve their new appointment sets per month by 45% in order to meet their sales objective. Realistically, they could only accomplish this by increasing their prospect conversation conversion ratio to the 50% range to spend less time to get the required number of new appointments each week. That would take a 500% increase in ‘conversation conversion’ ratios.
Secondarily, the team needed to differentiate themselves from their many competitors by targeting the ‘C-level’ prospect to decrease their sales cycle in days and increase their closing ratio. (Top–down approach) Prospecting contacts were limited to these titles of responsibility and prepared for the 2-day X2 Boot Camp.
The X2 Sales System™ 6-week training process was initiated with the training objective set at improving the TDS team’s prospecting competency minimally to a 50% conversion ratio, or an improvement of 5.5X.
III. Training Results
JDH Group implemented the X2 Pre-training process in TDS Metrocom locations and facilitated (16) 2-day X2 Boot Camps. After a review of the customized X2 Initiator™ Desktop training tool, participants made live prospecting calls utilizing the X2 conversation methodology and individually entered into coaching sessions with Jeff Hardesty, developer of the X2 Sales System™. Each participant was exercised after each conversation, working them through their personal learning curve.
2-Day X2 Boot Camp Results
Conversation-to-appointment ratios increased to 61% for a conversion improvement of 664%.
780 targeted ‘Top-down’ appointments were set
Based on the number of new ‘Top-down’ appointments set and their current sales performance numbers, the training ROI estimate was 1458%
30-day Results
Conversation-to-appointment ratios held at 56% for a conversion improvement of 437%
2522 targeted ‘Top-down’ appointments were set
75% increase in overall appointment activity
X2 Sales System™ incorporated into TDS Metrocom Learning Management System
X2 training process inserted into new hire training to shorten ramp-to-quota |
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