Penetrating New Markets

Problem

While a leading global provider of client-server software knew that its products were used across many industries, the client believed that its best opportunity to grow was to focus its resources in key markets that held the most potential. The client asked Go To Market Partners (GTMP) to identify the best vertical markets for its expansion strategy and then devise unique go-to-market plans for attacking each. Though market penetration plans were certainly a key component to success with this approach, the software provider also sought more tangible resources to facilitate its sales force’s transition into these new markets.

Action

Working together with the client’s sales and marketing executives, GTMP used historic sales data and industry structures to identify telecommunications and insurance as the most promising industries for increasing profitable market share. In addition, several specific geographic areas were chosen. To assist the client’s sales force and channels in selling to these industries, GTMP decided to create a complete “market penetration toolkit” for each.
GTMP consultants conducted extensive front-end research that involved interviewing hundreds of IT professionals and purchasing managers from top telecommunications and insurance companies in the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Switzerland, and Finland to identify the purchasing processes within each vertical industry and geography. Additionally, GTMP examined usage patterns within these companies for the client’s product and other competing software.

Based on this primary and secondary research, GTMP created a series of “tools” to enable the sales force of this software company to effectively attack the marketplace. These sales tools created during the course of this effort included:

• Market Opportunity Sizing - GTMP analyzed the potential market for the client’s software products in the telecom and insurance sectors to provide sales management with a tool to understand the market’s potential and provide motivation for their sales force focus on the markets.
• Industry Specific “Playbook” - GTMP created a comprehensive “playbook” for each industry that detailed the trends, needs, buying behaviors, and stakeholders unique to the specific market. The playbooks were designed to quickly and efficiently educate busy salespeople and channel representatives about each industry, likely “points of pain”, and how the purchasing and technology adoption processes occur within telecommunications and
  insurance companies.
• Lead Qualification Tool - Consultants from Go To Market Partners crafted a unique lead qualification model to assist the software provider in each phaseof the sales process. This “decision tree” allowed members of the client’s sales force to differentiate between qualified and unqualified sales leads, to handle objections appropriately, and to move the potential customer further along in the sales process.
• Customer-facing Presentation Tool - GTMP consultants developed presentations to assist salespeople in explaining its products to potential customers. These “solution guides” explained how the client’s products address and solve specific issues facing each industry using terms and language that customers could easily comprehend.
• ROI Model - GTMP consultants worked with the client to develop Return on Investment/Total Cost of Ownership models tailored specifically to the insurance and telecom markets. The ROI models detailed the financial implications of each industry-tailored solution and helped the sales force to quantify the solution’s value to the client.

Finally, GTMP consultants identified potential business partners by examining value-added resellers, systems integrators, and independent software vendors with insurance and telecommunications-specific expertise in Europe and the United States. Further, GTMP interviewed and profiled 80 key players who had technologies or capabilities that complemented to those of the client. These potential partners were then ranked according to their attractiveness in terms of short-term business prospects.

Result

Since the completion of the project in Q4 2001, the client has realized its objectives in the insurance and telecommunications markets. In the 12 months following this project, approximately 75% of the firm’s major account sales came from the telecommunications and insurance industries. Given the right knowledge and tools, the client’s sales force and channel partners were able to quickly and effectively penetrate the best vertical markets.