Reseller makeover: Sales training scores a bullseye

Digital services agency Bullseye, a specialist in digital strategy, web design and development through to digital marketing, was travelling well enough but high in CEO Jim McKerlie's mind was an awareness that the sales effort needed to be more coherent.

The company had grown from mergers and an acquisition in 2008 but its absorbed entities were still operating as separate businesses, making the overall sales effort by the company fractured and lacking harmony.

As a Microsoft partner, McKerlie met Bruce Rasmussen, managing director, Carpe Diem Consulting, through his links with the software vendor. For the past five years, Microsoft has employed Carpe Diem to meet its partners to develop soft skills training for its channel. Resellers across Australia attend the sessions to learn sales skills and receive advice on how to sell new products.

McKerlie enlisted Carpe Diem to put together a customised sales training program for all of its sales and technical/project personnel.

"We find out where the gaps are between sales and best practices and develop a road map to bridge that gap," says Rasmussen. "Depending on the recommendation, the client might need to develop its consulting, work on redesign, or redevelop its sales pitch."

Rasmussen says McKerlie came to one of the courses he ran in Sydney then contacted him to organise a ''heavy duty sales campaign/program'' for his team.

The course was developed to include Bullseye's core sales processes but to extend on this to reinforce a solutions approach to dealing with customers.

Research with a number of stakeholders to understand strengths and weaknesses in Bullseye's practices was followed by the whole group convening in Sydney in late January 2009 to undertake the sale program, which included practical examples sourced from existing customers and opportunities.

McKerlie says that apart from ''tightening'' the sales funnel (ie, removing opportunities unlikely to be won, and improving the chances of winning the others) there have also been sales process changes and greater clarity around how technical and project resources can better assist the sales process - both by spotting new opportunities and assisting with existing opportunities.

 "Sales funnel 'velocity' has been improved, as has customer focus by not wasting time bidding on deals that are too hard to win, for example, or where Bullseye is just being used to provide the third quote," says McKerlie.

The great thing about the course is that ''it is anchored in the philosophy that sales is all about identifying and solving customer problems'' so both Bullseye and its customers benefit from the sales training, which he says, is a quite rare accomplishment.

As well, the team was urged to stop talking about the product, and focus more on promoting the outcomes of the various solutions they can provide.

Rasmussen says, as a Microsoft partner, Bullseye benefited from having access to a sales training course that was developed and honed across a large number of Microsoft partners, but which was then customised to the unique needs of Bullseye.

The program, over two days, and included all sales, technical and program management to agree on a definition of selling focused on identifying and solving the customer's problems.

Attendees were given tips on how to improve their sales process by identifying and solving customer problems.

This included planning (figuring out what customer problems you want to solve); attracting (how to get customers and prospects to realise the types of problems Bullseye can solve); engaging (how to get customers to reveal their problems); elevating (how to engage and obtain commitment from senior decision makers); leveraging (appreciating that no sale is truly complete until the customer agrees to be a reference site).

The course included practical exercises and was customised to include Bullseye products, processes and customers.

Rasmussen says the foundation of his sales training is that technical people think of sales as a dirty  word. He had to come up with a definition of selling.

"Sales is identifying problems that customers have got and then working with them to solve the problem," he says.

Bullseye is the result of a merger between Bullseye Digital, RAN ONE and iFocus in 2008. That same year, Bullseye acquired SydneyWeb, a specialist SME online services provider.

McKerlie says when the various businesses merged, it also had to merge three different approaches to sales. He said they looked at each of them and came to the conclusion that none of them were outstanding.

He enlisted Carpe Diem to help in creating a sales philosophy for Bullseye that embodied exactly how it deals with its clients.

"We wanted to create a unique 'Bullseye Way', a sales process that would leave our clients completely satisfied and eager to work with us again," says McKerlie.

"We also hoped to create a more solutions-oriented culture.

We identified that only the people in the organisation were concerned with identifying opportunities with clients were the sales team.

"To address this we put 40 percent of our staff through the training program to ensure all our client-facing people were thinking about helping clients by identifying their particular problems, developing solutions and delivering excellent customer service."

McKerlie says the sessions were fun and professional, and the content was easy to understand.

He praises Rasmussen as a great presenter who invested a lot of time making sure his content was presented in the context of Bullseye's business environment. The result was a customised a program that was appropriate to Bullseye's industry, business and circumstance.

This was supplemented by real case studies and presentations from its chief executive and other leaders in the business, which made the two-day training course particularly effective.

"The training has helped us blow away the institutionalised thinking that only sales people have to seek opportunities, and in fact it has created a philosophy that by identifying problems that clients have we are helping them with their business," says McKerlie.

"We have replaced 'sales' with our distinctive Bullseye Way. This has assisted us to attract new clients, and retain our existing ones through a period of enormous change."

To make the training effective, he says, it had to carry out subsequent training to reinforce what they learned. This has been managed within the firm.

"It is fundamentally important that any organisation looking to undertake this kind of training secures the total commitment of its leaders," he says.

"They have to be open to every aspect of the experience, and enthusiastic and passionate about the improvements it offers.

"To reap the great benefits the training can offer it should be looked upon as a change management exercise rather than a sales training course."

The before snapshot 

Carpe Diem

Initially a secondary school teacher, Bruce Rasmussen left a 10-year career of senior sales, marketing and general manage­ment in the IT industry in 2000 to start a management consulting firm that focused on strategic planning, marketing and sales effectiveness.

Sensing a need to dramatically improve sales skills to benefit both the buyer and seller, his firm formed a partnership with Microsoft in 2004 to deliver - on an interna­tional basis - courses and consultancies to implement a "solutions" approach to selling.

"When I ask many people to define 'sell­ing', they often say 'forcing people to buy products they don't need'. Clearly many people have been burned," he says.

"By teaching IT resellers to implement a sales process based on genuinely solving customers' business problems, I've found a way to help these companies differenti­ate themselves from the pack, and really improve their customers' businesses.

"Hopefully my efforts make selling seem a valuable profession - not a refuge for poorly trained, over-paid, non-creators of value."

Bullseye

Bullseye is the result of a merger between Bullseye Digital, RAN ONE and iFocus in 2008. It then bought SydneyWeb, an SME online services provider.

Before the training, the company was still operating as three separate businesses, and its approach to answering proposals to customers was unstructured.

Every time it pitched for business it was a bespoke effort, says CEO Jim McKerlie. This led to inefficiencies and a disjointed business proposition and brand image - as one person would present Bullseye in one way, another would put forward a different picture.

It also meant the company was responding to a lot of briefs, but the success rate was lower than desired, because it did not qualify the opportunity and was racing against the clock to submit on time.

"Not only were we reinventing the wheel with each proposal, we also identified that we were responding to too many pitches," says McKerlie.

"We felt obliged to respond, rather than qualifying the opportunity to ascertaining whether it was the right fit for our business.

"Before the training, we were too product focused," says McKerlie.

"Our method of selling was to tell the prospect what we could offer, rather than ascertaining what their specific problems were and providing the right solution.

"We felt it was important to demon­strate our capability and what we had done elsewhere - but in doing so we didn't listen to what the prospect was really saying to us," he adds.

The afterwards look

Having developed the Bullseye Way in conjunction with Rasmussen, McKerlie says it has remedied the majority of issues it faced. The Bullseye Way consists of three principles:

1. How we sell

Our people now think and sell in solu­tion-based terms. Our approach is more consultative than it was before. We take the time to fully understand what our clients' pain points are, and respond with a solution that effectively takes the pain away.

2. How we manage client expectations

As a result of our training, we communicate more effectively with our clients. We guide the client through the process of delivering their project; they know what to expect from us through every stage of the process, and they know what we expect from them to complete the job within the set parameters.

3. What we do

We now sell our services based on the prob­lems we solve, rather than the attributes of our products. The clarity we now have around "what we do" gives us the ability to qualify opportunities and decide whether they are right for us. This has given us a clear vision, and has facilitated a shift towards a more unified Bullseye as everyone better understands what we do.