Sales Training Success: CustomerCentric Selling® helps Yipes increase the quality of their pipeline and improve forecasting accuracy by 96%.

Business Problem
Yipes began working with CustomerCentric Selling® in order to achieve two primary objectives:

• Meet aggressive quarter-over-quarter revenue growth targets, and
• Transition from what was perceived to be a "transactional sale," into a "solutions-oriented" customer model

At the time Yipes began working with CustomerCentric Selling®, revenues were growing, however, not on track to meet the aggressive targets set by its Board. Only one-third of the sales force was achieving their quotas.

"We anticipated that the experience and skill sets that our sellers brought with them from previous organizations would bring us results. Each quarter, however, we experienced the 80/20 Rule, as only a small percentage of our sellers produced a disproportionate amount of the revenue," said Mike McGlone, VP of Global Sales. The projected revenue shortfall was in excess of several millions of dollars.

Also, as the company was attempting to differentiate itself as a solutions-provider, marketing recognized challenges in supporting the messaging needs of the sales force. The majority of marketing collateral, including product positioning, brochures, product marketing, etc., went unused by salespeople. This resulted in inconsistent positioning of the offerings, because salespeople were left to create their own messages on-the-fly.

"This resulted in our salespeople going to a product-feature sale, which made selling to executives at the highest levels ineffective," said McGlone.

The CustomerCentric Selling® Solution
By leveraging CustomerCentric Selling®, Yipes believed they could address these issues and achieve their growth targets by:

• Defining a repeatable sales process that all their sellers could execute, including their B and C players, which also contained pipeline milestones that could be audited by management.
• Having their salespeople use conversational prompters, created for all of their targeted key players, rather than the traditional product marketing collateral, so their reps could conduct structured, solutions-oriented sales calls helping them to: (a) get any of their targeted buyers to share their goals, (b) explore the buyer's current situation and (c) position the offerings that map directly to addressing the current situation already uncovered.
• Enrolling their sales force in a professional sales training program that covered the tactical sales techniques and practice needed to execute the company's newly-defined sales process.
• Providing sales management training that codified a sales management model focusing on pipeline analysis, opportunity assessment, qualification, skill assessment, skills coaching, and revenue forecasting.

CustomerCentric Selling® provided Yipes with these capabilities and, as a result, Yipes achieved the following:

• In the two quarters immediately following its implementation of CustomerCentric Selling®, Yipes increased revenue by 41% compared to the same period in the previous fiscal year.
• These two quarters marked the two largest sales quarters in the company's history, making a full year of sequential quarter-over-quarter growth. Revenues exceeded the targets set by the Board.
• Transaction size increased by 18% and forecast accuracy also increased to 96% from a previous average of 80%.
• Although gross pipeline decreased, quality increased as a result of applying CustomerCentric Selling® methodology to existing pipeline.
• Average sales cycle decreased from an average of 75 days to under 60 days.

"The payoff with CustomerCentric Selling® has been significant; increasing revenues immediately. We have reached sales targets never previously achieved by our company. The methodology has become our company's standard method for interacting with our customers and prospects. Our salespeople are more professional and more confident, and our messaging is consistent, which has proven to further differentiate us in the marketplace."

-- Mike McGlone, Vice President of Sales Yipes Enterprise Services, Inc.


Benefits to Yipes:

• 41% increase in revenue
• Consistent quarter over quarter growth
• Forecasting accuracy improves by 96%
• Improved pipeline quality and average opportunity size increases by 18%
• Length of sales cycle cut by at least 15 days

More information on Yipes can be found at www.yipes.com