The Impact
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Holistic view of personnel, plan and performance against plan
Board Reporting with granular metrics on trending and program calibrations
Drive company decisions through data
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Profitability & ROI Analysis
Predictability in Pipeline & Revenue Forecasting
Drive investment decisions through data
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Management & Coaching
Sales Training
Compensation Structuring
Alignment to Marketing Initiatives
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Sales Process Development
Reporting Creation for Executives, Managers & Users
Sales Tool Implementation, Integration & Best Practices
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Alignment to Sales Goals ICP & Go-To-Market Strategy
Intent Data Strategy and Implementation
SDR/BDR Team Alignment
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Ideal Recruiting Profile development to align DNA of sales candidates to company sales program and revenue goals
Achieve a 90%+ success in sales hiring accuracy
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Develop scalable sales specific training
Create live training schedule
Determine indicators for management to send sales to for specific training
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Ability to have a seamless process from opportunity creation through deal closure
Advanced SE centric sales training vs. bullet point approach for demos
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Provide functionality wish list from the market
Utilizing sales development to better understand features and functionality vs. roadmap goals
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Provide a holistic view on successes, failures and areas of the business to invest/focus on
Holistic view of personnel, plan and performance against plan
Board Reporting with granular metrics on trending and program calibrations
Drive company decisions through data
Areas of Innovation
“Matt is a phenominal inside sales leader; thinks strategically, motivates a team to execute, and can scale-out an organization. At AccelOps, he produced stellar results as SDR team manager. He is hands-on, driven and knows how to adapt lead programs, processes and tools to be successful. It was a no-brainer to bring him to ForeScout. At ForeScout, we worked together to develop an effective sales development program. Matt was able to build a sizeable US and EMEA team where he crushed pipeline contribution expectations. He hires the right talent and enables them to be successful; earning respect from those that work for him, as well as kudos from sales and marketing. You can be rest assured that an SDR program will yield results with Matt at the helm.”
“Matt is by far the best director of sales development I’ve every worked with. He is 200% dedicated to managing and assuring that his team is effective in meeting the goals set, and always delivered high results. At ForeScout, he built the SDR team from a team of 1 (himself) to over 15 SDRs in North America, also bringing on and effectively managing a second team in EMEA. He developed a very successful Sales Development process, and earned a high degree of loyalty from his team. As a marketing director, I found him to be a true partner in the lead generation process, very supportive of lead generation programs, and a critical part in driving leads quickly through the process. He would be a great asset to any technology company looking to establish an effective, successful sales development strategy.”
“Producing quality and qualified sales meetings for sales teams is an art. It takes the right formula, exclusive for each company and sales team.
Matt Wheeler has a Ph.D. is creating winning formulas for qualified sales meetings. I’ve worked with Matt closely at two companies and his meeting generation programs are second to NONE. ”
Immertec
Immertec offers immersive virtual reality and 2D surgical training solutions to healthcare professionals that provide them with the opportunity to practice and enhance their surgical skills. The platform provided by Immertec allows medical professionals to learn from live surgical observations and communicate with the surgeon performing the procedure.
Problem:
The company had a small sales team and limited marketing resources, which made it difficult to reach potential customers effectively. The Immertec team did not have a clear understanding of their ideal customer profile or an effective go-to-market strategy. The company needed to build a scalable sales process and implement sales tools to help its team succeed.
Solution:
Matt Wheeler and Whitney Marshall led the charge to transform Immertec's sales and marketing organization in under 100 days. They tackled the following areas:
Ideal Customer Profile
Matt and Whitney worked together to determine Immertec's ideal customer profile. They researched the characteristics of the customers who were most successful with their product and developed a list of attributes to look for when targeting new customers. They then used this profile to focus their sales and marketing efforts on the most promising prospects.
Go-To-Market Strategy
With the ideal customer profile in place, Matt and Whitney developed a go-to-market strategy that included a clear messaging framework, a content strategy, and a plan for reaching potential customers through various channels.
Sales Process
Matt built a scalable sales process that included a well-defined sales funnel and a clear set of activities for each stage of the process. He also developed a sales playbook that included scripts, objection-handling tactics, and other resources to help the sales team succeed.
Sales Tools
To help the sales team be more efficient, Matt implemented a suite of sales tools, including a CRM, a sales engagement platform, and a sales intelligence tool. These tools helped the team stay organized, track their progress, and identify the most promising prospects.
Reporting
Whitney developed a reporting system that provided visibility into the sales pipeline and allowed the team to track progress against key performance indicators (KPIs). This allowed the team to identify areas for improvement and adjust their approach as needed.
Ramp Guide and ROI Predictability Engine
Matt and Whitney developed a ramp guide to help new sales hires get up to speed quickly. The guide included training resources, performance metrics, and best practices for success. Additionally, they created an ROI predictability engine to help the team forecast the revenue impact of new sales activities.
Hiring
Finally, Matt and Whitney led the effort to hire a new sales team. They used the ideal customer profile to identify the most promising candidates and conducted a rigorous interview process to ensure they found the right people for the job.
Results
Due to these efforts, Immertec's sales and marketing organization was transformed in under 100 days. The company had a clear understanding of its ideal customer profile, a well-defined go-to-market strategy, and a scalable sales process. The sales team was armed with the right tools and resources to succeed, and the company had a reporting system in place to track progress against KPIs. The ramp guide and ROI predictability engine helped the team perform at a high level, and the new sales hires were well-positioned for success. As a result, Immertec was able to increase its sales pipeline by over 400% in just six months and signed several large enterprise deals. The company is now well-positioned for continued growth in the future.
Transformation of the Product Roadmap and Pricing Strategy:
In addition to the sales and marketing organization, Matt and Whitney also focused on transforming Immertec's product roadmap and pricing strategy. They understood that the company needed to shift from being a services and hardware company to a software company to better align with market needs and their business objectives.
Product Roadmap
Matt and Whitney worked closely with the product team to assess the current product offerings and identify gaps in the market. They then developed a new product roadmap that aligned with the company's business objectives and the needs of their ideal customer profile. The new roadmap included enhancements to the core product, as well as new product offerings that would provide additional value to customers.
Pricing Strategy
To support the shift towards becoming a software company, Matt and Whitney also restructured Immertec's pricing strategy. They moved away from the traditional hardware and services pricing model and developed a new subscription-based pricing model that aligned with the new product roadmap. The new pricing model allowed Immertec to offer more flexibility to customers and improve predictability in revenue.
Results:
The transformation of the product roadmap and pricing strategy was critical in aligning Immertec's business objectives with the needs of the market. By moving towards a software-based model and introducing a new subscription-based pricing structure, the company was able to better position itself as a leader in the virtual reality surgical training platform market. The new product roadmap ensured that the company was offering the features and capabilities that their ideal customer profile was looking for, while the new pricing model provided more flexibility to customers and helped improve revenue predictability. This shift also allowed Immertec to expand its customer base and target larger enterprise deals, which helped increase its revenue significantly. As a result, the company was able to improve its market position and establish itself as a leader in the industry.
RiskIQ
A leading cyber security organization was great at getting users to sign up for the free version of their product. They had thousands of leads signing up for freemium accounts every quarter.
But, the users weren’t converting from free to paid accounts, leaving the organization with a lot of high-quality leads, but not enough leads converting from the Freemium product.
The organization partnered with us to find ways to leverage their inbound leads, improve their conversion rates, and get more users to upgrade their accounts from free versions to paid accounts.
In just 90 days, we helped them increase their inbound conversion rate by 124%.
Problem
When we looked into the systems at the cyber security organization, we identified the primary reasons why users were not converting.
The freemium users were not engaged. Once they registered, users had very little interaction with the tool. Most never logged in a second time or used features like running a query.
The Inside Sales team wasn’t fully capitalizing on leads. The team was only targeting leads they felt were engaged and qualified (based on whether or not they had a corporate email domain, what searches they ran, and what level of engagement they had with the tool). This thought process was leaving many valuable leads on the table.
The lead nurturing process was too short. Many leads had no more than two emails. and several calls placed before giving up or assuming there wasn’t interest.
The organization was losing faith in the tool. Because the organization was not monetizing their freemium tool, its viability in the market was being questioned by the board. This meant there was little to no innovation happening at the product level.
Solutions:
We worked with the cyber security organization to implement systems that solved problems and overcame challenges.
We optimized and improved the inbound lead process.
We reviewed the entire inbound lead flow process from start to finish, and we rated and reevaluated the quality of the data they were collecting.
We recommended changes to marketing forms, requiring additional information such as an email and phone number, to sign up.
We trained their Inside Sales Team on how to capitalize on ALL leads.
We taught the team to stop making assumptions about leads and designed an approach that worked on any lead that registered for the tool.
We trained their Inside Sales team on how to speak to a less-engaged lead, someone who signed up but didn’t take the product any further.
We implemented our 23/52-touch process, creating series of emails, voicemails, and social media touches designed to educate the leads who signed up but didn’t show much activity in the tool.
Even if they used a personal email, our goal was to speak to each lead, understand why they signed up, and walk them through various features all while qualifying this person towards their team size, budget, authority, need, and timing.
We repositioned the nurturing process from “sales” to “customer service.”
We created more customer-centric messaging. We changed the title of the outreach team from “Sales” to “Community Advocates,” knocking down the barrier many leads in this persona category have towards salespeople.
We redesign the role to be more about having consultative conversations and leading to qualification by adding value and helping out the community users.
Results
Our changes drastically improved conversion rates, leading more users to switch from free accounts to paid versions of the cyber security tool.
Inbound conversions increased by 124% in 90 days.
Freemium users started converting to premium accounts at a higher rate than ever before.
The product has evolved to include more features and data sets based on feedback the Inside Sales Team was able to uncover during their conversations with leads and customers.
The board fully supports further investment into the tool, and the product team has grown, allowing the tool to be an even better magnet for attracting high-quality leads that convert to paying customers.
AtScale
A fast-growing, big data organization was successful at securing deals with small- to mid-sized businesses. The only problem was that those clients were not their ideal customers. The company’s product was designed for larger, enterprise-sized businesses.
And, they were struggling to sell the product to those enterprise-level businesses.
The organization partnered with qualifiedMEETINGS to improve their sales process, target the right prospects, and secure more large-enterprise deals.
In the first 60 days, QM created a highly qualified opportunity with an ideal enterprise client that was valued at over $500,000.
Problem
The organization's big data software is built for enterprise-level companies that are gathering more data than ever before and running into business intelligence (BI) challenges.
These target clients are often very large organizations, which creates challenges for the sales team.
The organizations have a myriad of big data, BI, database, and Hadoop titles within their company.
Often, the titles overlap, making it difficult to find out who has decision-making and influencing power.
Most of the time, the people within those roles aren’t raising their hand on finding a solution.
This situation caused our big data client to struggle with identifying decision-makers, getting their sales and engineering team in front of the right people, and closing deals.
Solutions
qualifiedMEETINGS worked with the big data organization to restructure their outreach efforts using our 23/52-Touch Process.
We built a strategy around targeting companies by specific vertical, one of our areas of focus being retail organizations in the Northeast.
There were 86 viable leads related to big data and business intelligence within one of the largest office supply retailers based in the Northeast.
We utilized a strong success story from our client to educate the market, share stories based on value, and overcome objections using customer-centric selling methods.
We focused on engaging big data and BI lead groups, educating 25% of the group, listening to their challenges, and building a case to meet with their decision makers.
Results
Our 52-step touch process helped the big data company close a high-value deal with their ideal customer.
Within 60 days, they secured a Half a Million Dollar Deal
with the enterprise-level client.
In 60 days, our focused, account-based approach allowed us to process 71 of the 86 leads.
We left 15 leads open based on their low-level title.
We reached 27 leads live on the phone -- disqualifying 20, nurturing five, and setting follow-up activities with three.
Our process led to securing a meeting with the company's decision-makers -- the VP of Data Architecture & Analytics, his director, and his manager.
This happened based on a referral from the Senior Manager of BI & New Technology.
It took 16 activities to gain the referral and 25 activities to secure the meeting with the VP.
We secured 90 minutes to walk the decision-makers through an in-depth demo, which reviewed several of the use cases we created based on what we learned by talking to their teams.
The demo led to a 6-week proof-of-concept period.
After the POC period, they closed the deal -- securing a $500,000 deal over three years.
Cyber Security Startup
A new Director was hired to manage the sales development division for our client. They needed to hire their sales development team in less than 60 days to align to their goal of launching their new sales initiatives and did not have a dedicated internal recruiter with experience in hiring for sales roles.
Requirements
Hire within 45 days
Company culture fit
Prior sales development experience
Long-Term Goals:
Train up to become inside sales reps
Generate qualified pipeline
The Solution
QSR developed an Ideal Recruiting Profile (IRP) which included a DNA Blueprint of the candidate's requirements (company culture alignment, prospecting into latent buyers vs. active buyers, ability to prospect into enterprise companies for a complex cyber security solution and more) a Return on Investment (ROI) Ramp Guide which benchmarked what the new hires should be managed against based on industry data. The client's manager who would be responsible for this team also completed assessments on company culture and management style to ensure there would be a stronger alignment between new hires, the company and their management. Once the team was hired after going through a rigorous interview process that included multiple interviews, background checks, sales role plays and a series of assessments, the client was provided with a profile for each hire that included:
Copy of Resume
Start Date & Training Dates
Base + Compensation Rates
New Hire's 5 year goals
Assessment Results
The Results:
Through a rigorous recruitment process that considers additional factors to find the best-suited candidates for the role, our client was able to do the following:
200% increase in daily output
60% increase in response rates
180% increase in monthly pipeline contribution
DCE Productions
Challenges
As COVID created high demand for organizations to meet and host events virtually, DCE Productions, an event production company, needed to focus their sales efforts on helping companies transition from live to virtual event environments. Historically, they provided their sales reps with a 6-month ramp up period but with the need to pivot DCE's service offerings and outbound strategy rapidly, they needed someone who could generate pipeline and revenue quickly.
The Solution
We developed an Ideal Recruiting Profile (IRP) which included a DNA Blueprint of the candidate's requirements (company culture alignment, prospecting into latent buyers vs. active buyers, ability to prospect into enterprise companies and more) a Return on Investment (ROI) Ramp Guide which benchmarked what the new hires should be managed against based on industry data The sales manager also completed assessments on company culture and management style to ensure there would be a stronger alignment between new hires, the company and their management.
Once the sales rep was hired after going through a rigorous interview process that included multiple interviews, background checks, sales role plays and a series of assessments, the client was provided with a profile for the sales rep that included
Copy of Resume
Start Date & Training Dates
Base + Compensation Rates
New Hire's 5-year goals
Assessment Results
The Results
Through a rigorous recruitment process that considers additional factors to find the best-suited candidates for the role, the client was able to do the following...
Sales Rep began producing results immediately
Increased company sales output by over 250%
Closed the biggest deal in company history to date, expanding globally