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Valerus

How to EnterCompany: Valerus, Houston, TX
Company Description: Vallerus is a manufacturing company that engineers, manufactures and sells equipment used in the extraction and treating of natural gas.
Nomination Category: Sales Awards Achievement Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Sales Turnaround of the Year

Nomination Title: Valerus

Tell the story about how your organization has improved its sales performance since the beginning of July 2010 (up to 500 words). Focus on specific accomplishments, and relate these accomplishments to past performance or industry norms. Be sure to mention obstacles overcome, innovations or discoveries made, and outcomes:

Valerus (www.valerus-co.com) supplies compression, production, processing &
treating and preventative maintenance/brake, fix service to the oil and natural
gas sector. The company was founded in 2004 and grew rapidly as the price for
natural gas rose from ~$7-$13 mmbtu. In 2009 as the economy fell into recession
the price of natural gas followed dropping to ~$6 mmbtu. The rapid decline in
price dramatically changed customer buying behavior exposing deficiencies in the
sales force. During the boom, sellers could hardly take orders fast enough; when
boom turned to bust, the game changed and sales people found themselves ill
equipped to win in a competitive market. Then in July 2010, the CEO decided that
the sales force needed a complete transformation in order to compete
successfully and take advantage of the emerging market opportunities for Shale.
In short, the sales force needed to change from operating as a small start up
where personal relationship was king to a disciplined and well trained team
focused on delivering value. Prior to the turn around, all 30 sales
representative reported to the CEO. Below is detail of what was done to turn
around the sales force.

Gap:Sales structure & leadership: no sales leadership and a one size fits all
sales force with no boundaries or defined responsibilities. Solution: Hired VP
Sales & Region Sales. Implemented a three tier sales approach (Strategic
Accounts, Account Executives and After Market Services Sales)

Gap: Customer insight: “it’s all about relationship” was the core belief
Solutions: Contracted third party to complete customer insight study that
informed the sales turnaround

Gap: No job specifications, hiring guides or defined competencies. Solution:
Created competencies, job specs and hiring guides for all positions and trained
on behavioral interviesing.

Gap: No sales operations function. Solution: Hired Dir. of Sales Operations,
Director of Sales & Marketing Analytics and a Dir. of Training

Gap: Sales force size & deployment: no assigned customers or territories or
undestanding of market size. Solution: Sales force was doubled from 30 to 62.
Territories were set and 30% of customer relationships were transitioned
successfully to new sales people.

Gap: No sales methodology. Solution: Implemented Miller Heiman across the company.

Gap: No sales process. Solution:Documented the sales process & integrated with
Miller Heiman

Gap: No proposal process. Solution: Staffed and centralized proposals team.

Gap: Lack of CRM use. Solution: Complete redesign of CRM based on sales process
and integrated MH & proposal process

Gap: Lack of sales reporting. Solution: Sales dashboards implemented.

Gap: No performance management process Solution: Valerus Monthly Sales Review
implemented

Gap: Sales incentive plan. Solution: Implemented incentive plan for all positions.

Gap: No sales on boarding program. Solution: Implemented four week program.

Results
Revenue grew $118M or 147%
Gross Profit grew $5M or 106%
Revenue per Rep. declined 10%

New Accounts/Business: New sales representative sold 195 new accounts that
generated $29M in new business revenue. The backlog of sold orders going into
2012 is $136M.

 

List hyperlinks to any online news stories, press releases, or other documents that support the claims made in the section above. IMPORTANT: Begin each link with http://, and enclose each link in square brackets; for example, [http://www.youraddress.com]:

http://www.valerus-co.com/news.html


Provide a brief (up to 100 words) biography about the leader(s) of the nominated sales organization:

Daniel Cannon, SVP North America served as VP of Domestic Sales, and RVP of
Southeast Operations. Before Valerus, Daniel served as an operations
executive to Universal to whom Daniel sold his company in the mid 1990’s.
Eric May, Director of Sales Operations was promoted from Director of Lean
Manufacturing. Prior to Valerus Eric was a lean manger at various
manufacturing companies and is a US Marine Veteran
Airane Biermann, Director of Sales and Marketing Planning and Analysis for
Valerus. Prior to Valerus, Ariane served as Director of Business Intelligence
for Exterran & Tympany, and Controller for Dan and Argus Corporations.