Insights

This case study highlights how a global energy provider transformed a channel partner assessment to extract meaningful data and better enable their partners. A global energy provider needed to better gauge channel partner satisfaction The sales and marketing teams at a global energy company undertook an initiative to better engage with channel partners. Previously the company viewed channel partners in a competitive light as the partners directly interacted with customers. But the executive team believed they could work together with the partners to bring in more business. They launched a Channel Partner Assessment program on the 9Lenses platform that aimed to strengthen relationships with the partners, offering them better service and support. As they launched the initiative, the executive team realized that they required detailed data around what the partners needed and specific areas where they could improve. Previous methods of gauging satisfaction were insufficient The company relied on [...]

Every startup faces growing pains. Perhaps the most painful of these growing pains is getting the sales process right and generating a steady stream of revenue. Let’s take a look at how startups can build a high velocity sales team. Before diving into anything else, it’s important to understand three central concepts that every business should be aware of – Touch, Volume and Margin. Here are simple descriptions for them:Touch – Touch indicates how many customer interaction cycles there are in the development, marketing, sales, delivery, and support areas of your offerings. It basically refers to the amount of time you spend getting in touch with a potential customer, closing the deal, and onboarding a new customer. Volume – Volume is the measure of new customers within a given time period. You need to do some competitive analysis here to understand the average volume of new customers in [...]

In the early stages of my career, I used to get offended when people told me that I was a good salesman! I used to think of Vinny working customers at his used car lot and didn’t really want to associate myself with that particular persona. Maybe these compliments were backhanded at times, and at other times, maybe I mistook even genuine compliments to be backhanded. But as my career progressed and as I moved towards leadership roles, I really discovered how valuable my sales skills were. These skills weren’t always exercised in the context of selling products directly (though that was a large part of it); often it was selling investors, advisors, mentors, and even family members on my vision. Once I realized how essential sales was to being an effective leader, I fully embraced this attribute and doubled down to become an even better salesman. In the [...]

In our engagements with sales teams, we have encountered multifarious issues that impair sales team performance. Perhaps one of the most disproportionately overrepresented, however, is the problem of misaligned sales teams. Our data is not the only data to tell this story:numerous publications discuss the high cost of misalignment between sales and marketing teams. By some estimates, businesses lose an incredible $1 trillion annually due to wasted resources in sales and marketing. Organizations with well-aligned sales and marketing teams, on the other hand, surpass their competitors in revenue by 208%. In fact, sales consultants have found misalignment to be one of the top issues sales teams face. Although sales/marketing misalignment is the most common type of misalignment in sales teams, alignment issues are not exclusive to sales and marketing. Our data has revealed that sales teams have challenges with misalignment in a number of areas and with a [...]

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