Landslide CRM Advantage: A TeleTracking Case Study September 05, 2007
All sales managers know that using the right steps at the right phase of the selling cycle can successfully move any opportunity forward. And optimizing the integration of process, technology and knowledge can turn how reps sell, as well as what they sell, into a competitive advantage.
The Company: Pittsburgh, Pa.-based TeleTracking Technologies is a patient flow automation company that provides computerized solutions for hospital personnel. Their technologies allow hospital employees to better manage the process of preparing beds and transporting patients by providing real-time status reports on bed availability, transportation resources and patient locations.
The Problem: Due to the number of stakeholders typically involved with each purchase decision, each TeleTracking sale requires significant time and resources. So it was no surprise when the TeleTracking sales force realized it must maximize its win rate for new and renewal accounts—and produce more accurate forecasting—in order to continue to be successful.
TeleTracking had employed CRM tools to track opportunities but the focus was reactive—based on what a representative had done with an account—rather than proactively helping reps better prepare for their client prospects. CEO Anthony Sanzo saw the need for a sales effectiveness program that would produce a uniformed optimal strategies and tactics to guide sales reps on advancing deals.
The Solution: To find a solution, Sanzo hired Joseph Gentile, a senior sales executive with 20 years of proven sales management experience with companies such as Philips Medical and GE Medical Systems, as vice president of sales.
Gentile and his team decided to work with the Sandler Sales Institute to develop a highly customized sales process for TeleTracking. Gentile wanted a single application that would manage opportunities, provide insights into the sales process and leverage the sales support tools available at each step in the process. The project team determined the existing CRM system would not support this level of integration. So they built their new sales process around the Sales Workstyle Management platform developed by Pittsburgh, Pa.-based Landslide Technologies.
They divided the sales cycle into major stages—identifying specific tasks for the sales person and the buyer at each selling milestone to ensure the buying process was tracking with the representatives' selling process. Representatives were instructed to input specific information to demonstrate that the deal can move to the next step, which were linked to templates and selling tools representatives need to complete the task.
The Result: The result was a detailed definition of the sales process, task time guidelines and linkage of selling tools and sales knowledge to each sales step. When loaded into the Landslide Sales Workstyle Management platform, the integration produced an automated sales guide with a forward-focused sales coaching capability. Adoption of the new approach reached 100 percent.
At present, sales cycle lengths remains the same, but representatives are managing more deals simultaneously and closing at a significantly higher percentage of those opportunities, up from five of ten to nine of ten. Forecasting accuracy is also at an all-time high of more than 90 percent, resulting in a management confidence level which has yielded more resource and planning support for sales. Ramp-up times for new salespeople have since decreased sharply because the information embedded in Landslide mentors them through the sales learning curve sooner.
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