Much Bigger Sales: How to Make Them Happen
Are you competing for larger sales but just not winning them? Help is at hand.
One of my favorite success stories is how we helped a pharmacy benefit management company break through to win much larger sales. PBMs serve as third-party administrators of prescription drug programs. The CEO of this particular PBM called us, explaining that he didn’t need our help with getting more or better leads. He and his team were seeing attractive opportunities at the top of the sales funnel.
His issue was twofold: He was not winning enough of the opportunities he had—and he virtually never won the really big ones. His current annual sales revenue was $1 billion. His team’s largest sale to date had been $100 million.
We talked through that issue and some others to see if we might be able to help. We agreed that our firm could make a difference.
The CEO, Mark Thierer, and nine of his top sales people enrolled in our FOCIS® Consultative Selling program. We have a unique way of teaching consultative selling that involves teaching a theory that we then tailor to specific companies, markets, and the services or products being sold. We spend months helping our clients develop the most revealing and targeted discovery questions that create value for the buyer while building trust in the seller.
In the fourth and final session of the class, Mark said he was going to pull a lead out of the funnel at random, use the sales process the 11 of us had spent three months developing, and report back on how things worked out—or didn’t. He also asked all of his FOCIS® trained staff to do the same thing.
When he contacted the prospect he heard something that all of us in sales have no doubt heard more than once: “We are very satisfied with our current source, and we have some time left on our current contract with them. But we also have an open-door policy for learning about new suppliers and hearing new ideas. You are welcome to come in and meet with us but keep in mind we are very satisfied without our current vendor.”
“This is great,” Mark said to himself and his staff. “This is clearly a long shot, but I’ll get practice in trying out the new sales process Phil has helped us develop.”
Long story short: Mark had a solid meeting during which he learned several key things about the company that made him sure that his company would provide real value for what he hoped would soon be a brand-new client.
“This was easily the most informational and persuasive sales call I have experienced in several years,” he told us. “The prospect brought many of their internal business owners to the meeting, each of whom was an expert in their specific area. It was such a pleasure to learn so much strategic information from the client.”
Continuing to apply the FOCIS® sales process, Mark found himself called into several more meetings over the next 12 weeks. At the fifth meeting, the prospect confided to Mark that they would normally put this type of project out for bid because they often found that worked to their advantage. And for this project they had estimated that a bidding process would save them $50 to $100 million on the expected $1 billion contract—that is, $1 billion a year for five years. But Mark’s meetings had persuaded them that partnering with Mark’s firm to develop a custom product sooner rather than later would yield significantly more value to the entire enterprise.
“More than ever I’m a big believer in the FOCIS® process,” Mark wrote us later. “It really worked! Thanks for all your help in reshaping our selling process.”
Why Mark so pleased? It had turned out the client was right and the client benefited significantly.
And Mark’s company did, too. Sales jumped from $1 billion to $2 billion, and its largest sale increased to $1 billion per year from the previous $100 million. His firm, SXC at the time, was named Fortune Magazine’s fastest-growing publicly traded firm for 2011.
In the next few years, SXC expanded and acquired other companies. Mark asked us to train salespeople and other business development people in those organizations. By 2016 SXC had grown to $20 billion in revenue and changed its name to Catamaran, eventually being purchased by United Health Care. The name changed again and the company is now known as Optum.
Mark has written us a few times thanking us for helping them pivot. He has pointed out that his company had a great product, they made good acquisitions, and they had innovative technology. But he believed that the company would not have made such a leap and grown so quickly without the upgrade in selling skills and the new, stronger sales process our training provided.
Welcome, Ron Lintz!
We’re extremely pleased to welcome Ron Lintz to the Productive Strategies team as a senior consultant. A proven sales and marketing professional, Ron has served as a representative, director, and vice president of sales and marketing for more than 40 years. His expertise spans several manufacturing industries and markets, including non-automotive small engine fuel systems; technical, engineered custom plastic parts; non-fuel-related blow molding for furniture, outdoor and consumer products, and vehicle components, and applications for the switchgear, transformer, and electrical controls markets.
He has led teams responsible for North American key accounts and new business development, achieving annual sales of more than $100 million. He sees his selling experience aligning well with the highly competitive, price-sensitive markets Productive Strategies clients face. Ron has represented Walbro, The Plastics Group (TPG), and Western Industries-Plastic Products Group, among others, serving such accounts as John Deere, Arctic Cat, Square D, and Allen Bradley.
Please feel free to get in touch with questions or comments about this column or about how we might support your sales and marketing efforts. I can be reached at 847-446-0008 Ext. 1 or pkrone@productivestrategies.com .
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