Posts tagged: CRM

Innovation Factory Café if Recap: B2B Sales Strategy for Startups

Posted on May 17, 2012

by Mark Elliott

The Innovation Factory holds and helps with great events in Hamilton. As a regular attendee, I was honoured to lead a session as part of the Café If program on Sales Strategy.  Earlier this year I also participated in the Café If session on Lead Generation for B2B Sales.  Our attendance was not quite as large as my earlier session, but we had lots of great questions and an engaged crowd.


Below are some of the highlights from this session:

Value Proposition should focus on benefits:  The benefits for B2B sales should focus on increasing revenue, expense reduction, productivity improvement, or avoiding something bad like bad PR or breaking a law.  Quantifying the benefits makes the value proposition even stronger.

There could be multiple targets at an account:  There could be multiple contacts that could help with a decision on your solution.  Change the value proposition to suit each role.

Path to Sales Success: Understand the steps in your sales cycle from lead/prospect through to implementation.  This will help with the team roles to support the sale and is very useful when new employees start.

Sales CRM: Every organization should be using a Sales CRM to support their sales efforts.  A CRM can help with account information, archive activities, schedule future activities, keep track of opportunities, and keep notes.

Special thanks to Leah MacCharles for organizing.  To find out about other great startup events sign up for our VA Partners’ monthly newsletter.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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B2B Sales Strategy: Insider Tips for Startups

Posted on April 3, 2012

by Mark Elliott

On March 22nd I had presented “B2B Sales Strategy” as part of the MaRS Best Practices series.  It was a great experience dealing with the MaRS team both on the preparation of the event and at the session.  There were almost 30 attendees and we had many questions and interactions from the crowd.  The hour long presentation and questions were captured on video.

The highlights of the presentation included:

  • Having a great Value Proposition is essential
  • Use a CRM
  • Identify the steps in a successful sale
  • Focus on the right contacts and targets

These highlights are expanded on in the video provided:

You can also view the full presentation on Slide Share:

B2B Sales Strategy for Startups

It was a privilege to be asked to contribute to this session. Visit the MaRS website for lots of great content that can help startups. If you have any B2B Sales Strategy questions, please get in contact with me through our website  and I’d be happy to provide some assistance.

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B2B sales can be more Science than Art

Posted on February 16, 2012

By Mark Elliott

Recently I have decided that one of my goals for 2012 will be to help improve the perception of B2B Sales.  Many people have a bad perception of the role and the people in that role.  One of the things that helps to feed this is the thought that people are born to be in sales.  I feel that Sales is more Science than Art.  That is not saying that there are some people that are better suited for sales, but there is still process that is involved.  Here are my favourite sales processes that can help make the sales effort more effective.

Path to sales success. These are the steps in the sales process from the start of an engagement until the customer is rolled out.  This is one of the key actions every B2B organization should have formalized.  It is hard to ensure the sales team is moving in the right direction without a plan.  We wrote a series of blogs on our suggested path to sales success.

Meeting Plan.  A sales meeting with a target prospect is one of the best activities to help drive through to a close.  There should be almost as much time planning for the meeting as being spent in the meeting.  Creating a meeting plan and ensuring the customers’ expectations, your goals, and the proper next steps are outlines.  For more detail on a meeting plan, check out an earlier blog post.

Use a CRM.  A CRM should be used for the smallest and largest organizations to help with their sales efforts.  The tool does not just store accounts and contacts but can also be used to plan future opportunities, store strategic account plans, keep track of opportunities, and to help share information within the team.  An earlier blog from us on CRM highlights.

Research and be prepared. Understanding your best target companies and contacts can help to lead to a higher probability of success.  Some time spent researching targets and helping to link their needs to your benefit and solution is time well spent.  For some research tips here is a link to an earlier blog.

If you would like to get together for a coffee or beer and talk about how you can start thinking about sales as more of a science than an art, feel free to reach out and contact me.

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Marketing is not only about projects, it is about Project Management

Posted on November 10, 2011

by Stephanie Goodman

Marketing not only takes strategy, time and dedication, it also requires a Project Manager. Marketig is often broken down into various projects: SEO project, E-Mail Newsletter project and Social Media project. From personal experience in marketing at VA Partners I can say that it was only a matter of time until I took on the role of Project Manager (PM). Many people will attend PM course, certification or post-secondary program, but for me, it was all about practice makes perfect; I also took the advice of other PM’s to enhance my best practices. Listed below are tips I have put together from experience in order to help a PM enhance their job performance.

What to know about Project Management before starting your first project:

Become aware of how you present yourselves to others. You want to make sure your team will trust you and respect you and the same goes for the client. As a PM, you do not want to come off as the type of person that is unapproachable; on the other end, you do not want to be someone who is perceived as too easy going, giving off the impression that you are perhaps “too flexible.”

Prioritization is essential

A Project Manager may come into a situation where they are receiving complaints from a client, demands from a Sales Representative who sold the project and problems from their team all at the same time. It is essential to prioritize as a PM. Decide which issue needs immediate attention (perhaps look at which issue will cause further problems if not dealt with first) and schedule remaining tasks accordingly. Always keep in mind that everyone is working towards the same goal.

Organization: Every project acts like a machine with many moving parts; there is the internal team and the team working externally with the client. In order to stay on top of assigned tasks and deadlines, a PM must be able to prioritize not only themselves, but their team. One of the following ways a PM can stay organized is with a Workbook Schedule.

Workbook Schedule: At the beginning of the project, set up a calendar from Day #1 of a project to the due date. Visit the day the project is due and begin scheduling your tasks, going backwards. By scheduling your due dates and tasks at the day the project is due and moving backwards, you run less risk of scheduling time inefficiently.

Stay Focused: Staying focused on the end result is the key to ensuring the tasks leading up to it are completed efficiently. As a PM, you must ensure that you do not allow for distractions or interruptions that do not add any value to the project. Utilizing the Workbook Schedule will also help to keep you focused on the end result.

Flexible: Although you want to keep your project on time and bypass interruptions, as a PM you also want to ensure that you are flexible for any possible changes. The client, Sales Rep. or a member of your team might bring up a change to the plan or foresee a problem in the project. Going into a project with an open mind and the assumption that plans may take a different turn will help to keep your project moving efficiently.

Stay connected with the departments in your company

A PM not only works with their peers in their department, but will also work with – and at times rely on – their peers in other departments of the company, such as: Finance, HR, Marketing and Sales. If you work for a small company you more than likely have talked to and gotten to know those in each department. If you work for a larger company or corporation, you may have never met the Manager of Human Resources, as an example. Keep in mind that you do not want to burn any bridges. Keep lines of communication open with everyone and present yourself in a professional manner regardless of your relationship with your peers; you may be relying on these people in order to meet your deadlines.

Keep your tools up to date

Many times, companies get so caught up in providing their customers what they want, that they tend to neglect their own company. As a PM it is important that you are given the most effective tools in order to complete your job. Putting a Project Management Database in place (and a CRM tool) are essential to keeping your team on track. Using a Project Management Database (such as BaseCamp) that also allows the client to see your day-to-day work and deadlines, will keep lines of communication open and keep everyone on the same page; giving your client access to the project details will make tasks like weekly meetings more efficient.

If you are having problems putting together a project strategy or are looking for answers to questions about project management, feel free to reach out and we’d be happy to help.

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Running on All Cylinders – How VA Partners Helped Thomas Solutions Grow from 1 to 40 Customers

Posted on October 27, 2011

by Steve Gruber

Over the last 5 years we have had 50 clients and one of these clients, Thomas Solutions, was recently featured in the Toronto Star. Thomas Solutions is a 40 year old company that specializes in work truck rentals and leasing, manpower services and cartage services.  We started with Thomas Solutions about 2 years ago and at that time they had one very large customer that comprised over 99% of their annual revenue and no website.  Our goal was simple, diversify the revenue base and improve their visibility.  We were to accomplish this by growing sales and by increasing Thomas’ mindshare in the market.  We focused our efforts specifically on the work truck rentals and leasing business as it was the most scalable, repeatable and offered the best returns.  Today, Thomas Solutions boasts over 40 clients and has doubled its work truck rental and leasing business.  A few of the key successes include:

  • Helping to double revenue and grow customer base from 1 to over 40 clients
  • Active sales funnel with more than 50 additional opportunities and growing
  • Developing a target database of over 750 companies and growing
  • Running successful marketing campaigns for Thomas in two key markets comprising of print, radio, TV
  • Developing a corporate video and video testimonials for use on the website and in customer presentations
  • Working with our PR partner to secure two articles in tier 1 national papers – The National Post and Toronto Star

Thomas Solutions success was built on using Venture Accelerator Partners ‘Sales and Marketing Fast Start Plan’.  It entailed alot of hard work and support from not only Thomas’ General Manager and senior leadership group but also our team and our partners.  From a sales and marketing perspective though, I wanted to highlight some of the key steps we undertook to get to this point as I believe they are valuable and can be transferred to almost any business to help achieve success.  They include:

  • Working with the senior management to develop a sales and marketing plan that looks at past successes, the value proposition, core competencies, human and capital resources to identify what markets to focus on
  • Refining the value proposition with a focus on addressing client business pain in quantitative means – basically building a compelling and quantifiable business case
  • Targeting of specific markets and companies where the Thomas model has the most likelihood of success
  • Utilizing a CRM system to manage the customer and prospect database which is also used for a variety of marketing and sales purposes (Newsletter, direct mail)
  • Providing prospect research, cold calling, targeted emails, follow ups and proposals to end clients
  • Understanding where to use marketing to help support the sales effort and create brand awareness and staying power; and being able to try in some cases a few different options
  • Executing the actual sales and marketing work with precision and dedicated effort and feeding back learnings into the messaging
  • Providing ongoing support so the momentum is not lost

I think ultimately the development of sales and marketing plan with actionable items and then the execution of that plan is what makes our relationship with Thomas Solutions a success.  If you have a need for sales and marketing assistance to help get your business moving in the right direction, please don’t hesitate to call.  We would love to help.

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