Challenge
A cybersecurity company with an industry-leading services offering had the potential to boost renewal and expansion opportunities—and therefore revenue—but was limited by its small, specialist sales team that carried the majority of the sales process. They needed to leverage the core sales team and enable them to see the value of the services to a broader base of customers. That core sales team was unfamiliar with the different buyer personas, so they struggled to present the most relevant value. Additionally, the company needed to completely shift their positioning and messaging from selling a product-based solution to selling a comprehensive solution. And without a sales playbook, they couldn’t leverage an existing framework.
Solution
The company’s sales enablement team partnered with Decker to create a go-to resource for the global field sales team to execute the new sales play successfully. We conducted dozens of interviews with sales leaders and reps, subject matter experts, and marketing teams to deliver an interactive playbook, complete with videos and links to internal resources. It included:
- The Why: a video from executive sponsors communicating the power of the play, not only for existing customers but also for each sales representative
- Persona analysis with pain points, priorities, and appropriate points of view
- Outline for value-based messaging to guide the overall narrative
- Key questions to ask in order to open opportunities
- Best practice pitch examples
- Customer success stories
The more a sales playbook is used, modeled, and referred to, the more valuable it becomes as a consistent narrative across the organization. Therefore, the final step in our engagement was to develop and deliver a series of workshops for the Americas, EMEA, and APJ sales reps to help them understand how to use the playbook and identify opportunities, and to give them the chance to practice their pitches.
Impact
The company exceeded revenue goals for this campaign by empowering its sales reps to own the conversation with customers and prospects, which gave them the confidence to engage different personas and present value-based selling. The consistency in positioning mobilized the existing sales team and helped decrease the time required to onboard new sales reps. This playbook then became the model for future solutions.