TeleWebSales: A Methodology Discussion with Anneke Seley (Part 11)
Check other articles in the series...SM: I think what I have seen is that India is incredibly process oriented. The big outsourcers who are doing call center type processes in India are on the ball in terms of process. However, it has mostly been in a customer support role and a technical support role; it is all inbound. The extra level of finesse that is required to actually conduct outbound telesales versus customer support is a very different skill set. The process piece is there, but that extra finesse to be able to engage people in sales conversations versus support conversations does not exist.
AS: That does not surprise me because it is such a different skill.
SM: I think it does not exist because people have not done it yet. I think it is a wide open opportunity. There is a great opportunity to create high powered telesales opportunities out of India, and do outsourced selling. They could do the selling on your behalf at 5% of the cost. What are some of the best case studies of effective leverage of your methodology which you have seen in your industry?
AS: I will talk about two Phone Works clients and then I will talk about some other companies. Informatica has been our client over the years and they have very successfully added inside sales to a completely field sales model. In so doing, they have not only leveraged the field sales organization and got them away from selling $10,000 deals, but they have also increased the average selling price per deal. Additionally, they managed to sell a lot of lower end products and add-on products to the install base, and are selling over $1M per rep, per year. That is a classic use of both leveraging the field sales organization and producing revenue in and of itself.
Success Factors is another one of our clients, and they are in their quiet period now. The woman who was our client in that project was the original VP of Sales at SalesForce.com, so you can imagine a lot of the same best practices were introduced there. Shelly Davenport is her name. She did a brilliant job growing that company very successfully, along with the other members of the management team of course.
Apart from that, I have been studying a few other companies that are really best in class; WebEx is one. They really started with a whole “Web Touch” sales approach. Their sweet spot is SME, and they do it brilliantly. They are a marketing machine.
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