Project details

A multibillion dollar global technology giant was growing revenues fast, but sales and marketing expenses were growing faster. We looked at where those dollars were flowing, both to the salesforce and behind-the-scenes in seller preparation, and ultimately helped the company simplify organizational structures, save millions in costs, and create better-prepared sellers with more time for customers. Despite healthy revenue growth and product portfolio expansion, TechCo had a problem: sales and marketing expenses were rising faster than anything else. The salesforce had become bloated, and roles were murky due to new layers of product specialists and channel partners who often duplicated the efforts of the primary salesforce. Meanwhile, as the complexity of the product portfolio grew, some critical capabilities appeared to be missing. For one, sellers struggled to get the training and information they needed when new products came to market, crimping their ability to sell. For these and other reasons, Consult Plus analysis helped reveal that sellers spent less than 25% of their time in front of customers, dragging down sales productivity. High spending and poor results meant the company needed to make some immediate changes to the sales organization to improve its productivity. At the same time, it needed to take a step back and look at how the organization could better support sellers in a fast-paced and ever-evolving environment.

• Implemented significant productivity improvements, increased customer-facing selling time by 33% and improved time to revenue.
• Reduced overall costs by 10% over initial baseline and saved more than $25M in non-sales and marketing costs.
• Realized more than $20 million in actual savings by changing partner economics and created the potential for $250 million in incremental bookings.
• Improved seller experience with streamlined enablement organization and better collateral.

Working alongside the team at TechCo, we developed the following recommendations on their core challenges:

• Sales productivity:
  • Unlock near-term productivity by instilling a more rigorous performance-focused culture; managing out chronic under-performers and investing in better training for those with potential.
  • With new visibility into costs and returns, ensure GMs align high-cost direct salesforce with highest-return opportunities and better align the sales specialists with the primary salesforce.
  • Re-vamp partner model for the future, redefining roles and incentives around the next generation of products.
• Sales preparation:
  • Create a new sales enablement organization to focus on high-value areas for sellers such as collateral, training and demonstrations.
  • Invest in a single online seller workspace to replace the hundreds of portals sellers had to sift through for information.
  • Take a more interactive approach to sales collateral that allows for seller and customer feedback.