The client needed a new approach to develop highly innovative and successful strategies to win new business from the competition and to protect existing business from competitive loss. SMG's sales consultants worked with the client to target specific accounts and customize the Strategic Selling program.
Each two-day Strategic Selling session began by analyzing the target account's business needs, challenges, goals, objectives, and strategies, as well as the key players involved in the decision-making process. The group then divided into teams, where they assessed competitor's vulnerabilities and strengths, and began planning their attack. Then, the teams developed successful response strategies to what-if scenarios as well as a detailed action plan to pursue the sale.
Results
The Strategic Selling program was successful in identifying new strategies for the client's sales professionals when approaching customers. In one case, the client tried to win a large automobile company's business from its competitor.
During the Strategic Selling session, the client discovered that the automobile company was looking for a suitable business to co-sponsor its racing team. The account manager contacted the automobile company's advertising agency and won their support. Together, they met with the VP of Marketing and then the President of the automobile company. With the resulting marketing agreement, the company also agreed to purchase all of their telecommunications services from the client. This deal resulted in $50 million dollars of new revenue.
In another session, the client focused on trying to win a multi-year information technology contract from a large government agency. The requirements of the Request for Proposal seemed unnecessarily complex and very different from commercial requirements. The client used to build costly administrative systems from scratch to support these requirements. This elevated their costs to the point where they could not compete with the incumbent supplier, which already had their systems in place.
As a result of the Strategic Selling program, the client developed a new strategy: to bid as close to the requirements as possible without increasing cost. Simultaneously, the client lobbied that the procurement requirements artificially raised costs and was anti-competitive. The government agency ultimately awarded the contract to the client.
