Landslide Technologies Case Study

Customer

Production Access’s key product is a software suite named Operations Center. Operations Center is an enterprise solution for drilling and production operations that covers drilling & wellwork, production, profit and loss, and more. It monitors more than 13,000 data entities to manage the field operations for oil and gas operators.

Production Access, Inc. has been in business for 13 years and faces the challenge of selling to multiple high-level decision makers in a well defined and highly competitive marketplace. In September of 2006 Jeff Chestnut was brought in as Vice President of Sales.

Problem — CRM and SFA Offerings Were Not Sales Process Focused

The Production Access sales team covers the entire USA out of its Houston office. Working out in the field and in the office, they interact with prospects in a variety of ways — face to face, over the telephone, via letters, through email, proposals and tradeshows.

Jeff knew he needed a tool to help his sales team sell a high dollar value product to a small and highly defined market. He also needed a way to monitor the progress of his sales pipeline in a meaningful way.

Other than a few unconnected contact management and database applications, the sales team did not have a dedicated sales management tool. Jeff needed a system to bring his new sales team up to speed on Solution Selling™, a well-known sales methodology. Jeff found that most CRM systems wouldn’t do a good job working with a sales process. They would do a great job at contact management, but when he started to look for what he needed to help reinforce his sales methodology he found the offerings limited.

Solution

Research done during his days as a sales consultant had introduced Jeff to Landslide. “What I liked the most was that I could have a configurable, customizable sales process using my words and my definitions of process steps.”

Results

Ramp Up of New Sales Group

Using Landslide to implement his sales methodology, Jeff has been able to bring his new sales staff up to speed on a comprehensive and complete sales process that involves a number of decision makers at the senior management level. In the few months that the sales team has adopted Landslide they’ve already seen the benefits. In 6 months Jeff suspects he’ll see the continued development and improvement in the movement of prospects through his pipeline and a high conformance to his sales methodology.

Greater Pipeline Visibility

Landslide is providing Jeff with fast and meaningful feedback about what sales activities are proving troublesome for his sales people. He does this by looking at which sales opportunities are not closing. By looking at what activities have been accomplished in each sales opportunity, Jeff can tell exactly why problems are occurring. His sales staff is often surprised by the level of detail he can bring into sales coaching conversations. The reports are also very meaningful to other senior members of his company.

Predictable Results and Customer Experience

Being able to bring a repeatable process and methodology to every sales engagement means that each prospect and customer gets the same high-level and satisfying experience from the Production Access sales team. Since the team sells in an industry where prospects and customers compare notes on a regular basis, this gives the Production Access sales team a competitive edge.

More Selling Time for Sales People

Jeff encourages his sales team to use the VIP service to eliminate the burden of data entry from their work week. VIP assistance provides the Production Access sales team with more time to sell and helps them keep more complete and up to date data in the application.