Sales Partnerships, Inc. - Sales Distinction 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 Distinction Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Sales Distinction of the Year - Financial Services
Nomination Title: Crushing targets in financial services sales with an impossible target market
Which will you submit for your nomination in this category, a video of up to five (5) minutes in length, explaining the achievement since July 1, 2018 of the nominated sales organization, OR a written essay of up to 650 words describing the same? (Choose one): An essay/case study of up to 650 words
Sales Partnerships provides comprehensive turnkey field-based outsourced sales services for Fortune 500 and Global 2000 companies in more than 200 North American markets. We hire, train, and manage the teams (all as Sales Partnerships’ W-2 employees) and execute sales under the brand of the client represented. Clients work with us because of our ability to solve complex sales problems and successfully launch programs at large scale in short periods of time. We do this by leveraging industry expertise along with unique/proprietary solutions and technology.
The program for this nomination is SPI’s work doing merchant processing acquisition sales focused on selling to large franchises in an especially difficult sales environment.
The Challenge
Sales Partnerships was asked by one of the largest credit card companies to maximize sales to their franchise targets before the end of 2019. The problem was every franchise prospect had been worked for more than two years with an average of four prior rejections on each. We were asked to work the exhausted list of large franchises and secure any possible sales – a team working virgin territory would have an aggressive goal of 100 – that was the target set for SPI’s team (an exceptionally difficult goal considering this was a target list who had already said no several times). Making the program more challenging was that these accounts needed to be worked face to face but were located distributed throughout the US where very little density existed to optimize sales representative time. Finally, we had to do the sale without a special promotion beyond what was already presented to them previously. Out of just over 2,000 prospects, we had to close 100 large franchise deals in under a year with an exhausted target list.
The Solution
Sales Partnerships was brought in after field sales, telesales, direct mail, and email marketing through some of the largest companies in those spaces had failed. This needed field sales with exceptionally well trained, managed, and supported sales teams maximizing every possible opportunity.
The keys to success on this program were implementation of our proprietary headhunting process, detailed training to sell both emotively and consultatively, and utilization of SPI analytics models showing great detail as to how every franchise who signs will win in specific terms. We sold both to detail for corporate wins but also leveraged emotive selling taking advantage of the momentum already built from the large number of franchises already signed as well as tactical sales creating momentum inside of each franchise. We knew how individual franchise owners would win as well as corporate benefits.
The Results
Our target was 100 franchise signings out of just over 2,000 opportunities. 2019 resulted in SPI beating the sales target by 529% with just under 600 of the 2,000 brought on board as profitable customers. The effort was completed at less than half the cost of sale of virgin accounts in that space with revenue generated exceeding all expectations.
The SPI team out-performed the clients’ top sales team by more than 50% while working exclusively high reject prospects when being compared to their teams’ just working new untouched accounts. The client hoped the program would break even – we flipped those expectations with a wildly successful program. Overall client ROI was profitable at 329%.
The program gained recognition from our Fortune 500 clients’ President as a “remarkable sales achievement.”
“Sales Partnerships took what looked internally like an unpopular housekeeping task that wasn’t viewed as having much sales potential and turned it into a legitimate monster sales program. I definitely recommend them and look forward to our next partnership.” - Dan – Client Senior Manager