Sales Partnerships, Inc - Sales Process of the Year
Company: Sales Partnerships, Inc., Broomfield, CO
Company Description: Sales Partnerships, Inc. is the premier direct sales outsourcing company in the world, offering branded representation that delivers rapid revenue lift for the most influential B2B firms in the world. Whether it's brand activation, customer acquisition, or retention, SPI is the leader in providing scalable and proven solutions to the Fortune 500.
Nomination Category: Sales Awards Achievement Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Sales Process of the Year
Nomination Title: The Science of Sales
Sales Partnerships, Inc. has been an industry leading Sales Outsourcing, Contract Sales, and Brand activation firm for the past 20 years. Head-to-head against our competitors, we have never been outperformed. The reason for our success is in methodically working to improve every area that yields sales performance.
SPI utilizes a sales process called “The Science of Sales”. The sales methodology utilizes a real-world approach to sales where the customers are viewed as people rather than “targets.” Old practices such as using open-ended questions to start a conversion (hallmarks of processes from the 90’s and early 00’s (and earlier)) were replaced with practices better fitting today’s culture. SPI’s emotive selling teaching, for example, goes into why customers make decisions that aren’t necessarily logical from a business perspective. Ultimately, we are selling to people – rationally and emotionally – both are used in equal measure when deciding to buy.
All elements of the selling system are backed by metric tracking, where we can take actual production data and immediately identify the causal elements for challenges and flag opportunities for improvement.
As with many consultative selling practices, discovery with customers is critical to the success of the system. Integrating Strategic Selling into The Science of Sales allows SPI staff to successfully gather information while building rapport with various role players in an organization. This process, interestingly, works equally well in SMB sales as much as it does in large enterprise sales.
Lastly, we integrate body language training to allow our team to better understand how they are perceived and how they can better read their customers. 80% of human communication is nonverbal, and half of the verbal communication is tone and intonation. The holistic approach to selling allows for faster relationship development while identifying problems and opportunities in accounts faster.
SPI’s leadership through The Science of Sales has led to recognitions by our peers including our publishing sales advice in Selling Power and Sales and Marketing Management Magazine as well as speaking at global summits including, most recently, Pharmaforce. The author of The Science of Sales, SPI’s Chief Sales Officer Fred Kessler, was honored by the Stevies in 2019 as the Top Senior Sales Executive in America.
Briefly describe the nominated organization or individual: history and past performance (up to 200 words):
Sales Partnerships, Inc (SPI) provides field-based turn-key sales outsourcing, contract sales, and brand engagement services for Fortune 500 and Global 2000 companies. We engage face-to-face with a brand’s customers while providing complete transparency and accountability. As a specialist BPO company in sales, our calling card has historically included fielding and managing successful teams in a matter of days and weeks that would normally take quarters or years to deliver, while still providing the gold standard for brand protection.
The technology SPI leverages for field sales has received national recognition ranging from media coverage to prior gold Stevie wins. We combine proprietary technology with best of breed commercial solutions to help drive sales success.
Operating a field sales organization successfully and safely during a global pandemic required creativity and innovative technology solutions. Combining our knowledge gained in working with public health departments on a tool we created to help track Covid-19 transmission with our prior advances in AI-based territory management, we demonstrated a best use of technology to help allow field sales to be possible during the epidemic.
Outline the nominated achievement since July 1 2019 that you wish to bring to the judges' attention (up to 250 words):
What are the results? Head-to-head, SPI has never been outperformed by a competitor or client organization in 20 years. Our average performance is 50% higher than our nearest peer. Our turnover rates for performance are half the industry average because we are able to self-identify problems before quotas are missed. Our data shows that The Science of Sales process accounts for nearly a quarter of our increased results, the remaining elements are gold-standard recruiting processes and industry-leading technology to optimize sales performance.
Explain why the achievement you have highlighted is unique or significant. If possible compare the achievement to the performance of other players in your industry and/or to the nominee's past performance (up to 250 words):
For 2021, SPI beat quota with every team we field while, according to the Harvard Business Journal (2021) and Spotio (2021) estimates have only 15% of US sales forces within 20% of pre-Covid quotas
We had the opportunity to go head to head against our competitors this year (including other Stevie nominees) and achieved the #1 spot in overall sales for all three of our major engagements.
Reference any attachments of supporting materials throughout this nomination and how they provide evidence of the claims you have made in this nomination (up to 250 words):
The attached documents include two case studies showing programs where we adopted this selling program (due to confidentiality, we can't do a case study on the third engagement):
Case Study about Hesitant Merchants detailing the efforts described in the nomination
Case Study about Residential Internet sales helping our client go from 5% to 50% market capture
URL link to SPI's web site