Telstra Business ensures that their customers have all the telecommunication tools required to run their businesses efficiently. Telstra supports over two hundred thousand customers ranging from smaller entities to large corporations.
#1 – Project Silver
Many customers engage with Telstra’s Small Business Sales & Service (SBS&S) division through contact centres. The opportunity was identified to up sell and cross sell products to these customers. However, it was recognised that an inbound contact centre agent is not primarily skilled at selling. Also, a customer may not wish to spend too long on the phone once their initial query has been resolved and would probably prefer to be called back at a more convenient time.
Executive Director of SBS&S, Charles Agee, initiated a plan called Project Silver which allowed for leads to be referred from the inbound contact centre agent to a skilled outbound sales person who could best fulfil the customer’s needs.
The Challenge
Telstra Business has three different sales channels and they wanted to ensure that the opportunity is always referred to the most appropriate channel. Where there is a Telstra Business Centre situated near the customer, they should be the prime contact point for the customer. In other cases, the most suitable channel could either be an external industry partner or an internal telesales area. Hence the challenge presented itself; how was Telstra not only going to route these leads correctly but also track and manage the outcomes? If certain channels or sales people within the channel were not performing, how could the process be adjusted to ensure best results?
Value-Ad’s Solution
PWC introduced Value-Ad as a solution partner, based on the success of several large projects in South Africa. Value-Ad’s sole focus is on the improvement of sales for their customers through efficient and intelligent lead management with the “Smart Allocation” technology that enables this, having developed since 2005.
In the words of Tony Logue, General Manager of Sales Operations & Channel Strategy;
“value-Ad provides a flexible off-the-shelf solution that allows companies to put in place a best practice leads management approach.”
There are two components to the Value-Ad solution:
Firstly, Value-Ad was able to provide the mechanism or ‘plumbing’ to ensure the lead was routed to the correct channel. This process first determines which the most appropriate sales channel is, and then within the channel, who is the most appropriate sales person to receive the next lead. Given the complexity of the multiple channels and various combinations of skills of sales people, this in itself was no mean feat.
Next, once the ‘plumbing’ was in place and data had been collected, Value-Ad was able to focus energies on getting the best results for the sales leads. This is done primarily by optimising the allocation of leads by applying an intelligent decision engine (Smart Allocation). Optimization strategies that can be applied include allocation based on sales person behaviour, allocation based on proven product specialties and ultimately allocations based on calculated probabilities of success.
Value-Ad’s primary objective is to help companies improve sales by optimising the leads process.
Tony Logue said, “Value-Ad is a lead management specialist who aligns incentives so that they are driven to improve the strike rate of sales opportunities.”
Implementation
The use of common technologies such as email, PDF’s and the internet meant that Value-Ad was easily implemented into Telstra’s contact centres and sales areas as there was no dependency on internal IT departments. Within a couple of weeks, leads were flowing through the system and to date, almost 200 000 leads have been allocated.
Results
By routing the sales opportunities to specialised outbound sales people, Telstra have seen a steady increase in the closing rate of the sales areas, with one area improving by as much as 77% over 6 months.
Once the infrastructure of routing leads was well established, Value-Ad was able to apply their specialisation in optimising the sales results. The first step in this process was to allocate leads based on sales person behaviour. The sales people soon learnt that in order to receive more leads, they had to complete the ones already allocated to them. The managers immediately saw an improvement in success rates of up to 66%.
#2 T-Suite
Simultaneously to the implementation within Project Silver, Telstra Business also chose to engage Value-Ad to assist in selling a specialised product called T-Suite within the larger corporate customers division. This product can only be sold by approved Telstra dealers but the sales process requires input from several internal Telstra sales staff.
The Challenge
The challenge that Telstra faced was how to get the identified lead to the most appropriate dealer, based on their geographic position as well as their skill set, whilst involving the necessary internal sales support staff when required at the appropriate time. They needed the ability to track the progress of each lead whilst keeping all relevant parties informed throughout the entire sales cycle from beginning to end.
Value-Ad’s Solution
Prior to Value-Ad this was done via email and telephonically. This meant that the allocation of dealer was subjective and invariably someone was left out of the communication loop. It also made tracking the progress of the sale very difficult.
The complex sales process was a test of Value-Ad’s flexibility, but this was again proven to stand up to the challenge.
Benefits
Some of the benefits that have been realised are:
- Consistent information is collected about the sales opportunity upfront which assists in better qualification and has a better success rate of closing the deal.
- Account Executives, Sales Specialists and the Telstra partner are all simultaneously kept informed by automated push notifications.
- There is full visibility of sales opportunities and their progress which has allowed for much easier management of the opportunities by both Telstra and the Telstra partner
One of the major benefits of Value-Ad is that it has allowed Telstra Business to identify gaps in the channel where there was no appropriate partner for the region or with the required skill set. This has allowed Telstra to extend their reach by growing their partner base in these areas.
Telstra Business and Value-Ad
When asked what she was looking for in a leads management solution, Peta Ott, Sales Channel Manager, said the solution must:
- Be flexible
- Get the right lead to the right sales person
- Provide good support to her team
“Value-Ad has more than met these requirements and Value-Ad’s speed to action has been excellent” , said Ott.