“We knew we could ‘move the needle’ to capture more profitable customers but we were stuck with an inefficient sales process, poor competitive positioning and approach to the changing market economics.
Since relocating our business to Round Rock, we continued to experience less than stellar sales performance. We sought out a sales advisory firm and brought in Sales OverDrive to help us figure out how to move our business and entire team to the next level.
Sales OverDrive brought focus to our sales process, messaging, positioning and teaming that has resulted in an immediate and sustained impact for our business. In the first 60 days, we closed the largest and most and most profitable deal in our history. And through ongoing, Sales OverDrive helped us turn a potential new client loss into our 2nd biggest business deal. Using Sales OverDrive’s world class sales coaching and mentoring, we have moved and positioned AccuBuild to grow more profitably and much faster.”
– Josh Stearns, Principal and VP of Sales and Marketing, AccuBuild
About the Client
Based in Round Rock, TX, AccuBuild was founded in 1987 and is a family owned and operated business that has helped more than 500 construction companies across the nation make faster and better decisions about how they manage more than $4 billion in construction projects. AccuBuild’s mission is to make each client more profitable, and they accomplish this by driving operating efficiencies with a powerful, user-friendly construction management system tailored to meet each client’s unique requirements with a passionate team of sales, industry experts and certified professionals.
Situation
AccuBuild is in a competitive space and trying to break away from the competition while growing top-line revenue without taking additional investment capital. The executive team wanted to leverage their many customer wins, excellent reputation and talented professional team to capture more market with an improved sales and marketing process and team.
Considerations
The sales team was “stuck” using a common lead generation and selling approach in software technology which was a “show and tell demo.” The majority of AccuBuild’s prospects were technical in nature without any buying authority but with considerable influence on the decision process. The average decision time frame for new clients had grown to more than 100 days to make a purchase for an expenditure that was strategic for the client’s business process and presented a relatively small expense in relation to the overall budget. The sales team wanted to move the conversation from technical to business alignment, reduce the selling time, improve the sales process and capture more profitable customers.
Solution
The Sales OverDrive partners met with the AccuBuild principals to assess the mission, business priorities and strategy to jumpstart sales and accelerate market share capture in a competitive business-to-business construction software market. OverDrive applied its Top Line Insights Diagnostic, and identified what “moving the needle” would require for AccuBuild’s. We installed an OverDrive Sales Process, messaging and positioning which leveraged Accubuild’s product and service superiority. Some of the observations and actionable impact included the following:
Sales Process
The original sales process relied on walking the prospect through a technical and feature-based demo. This only served to increase the sales cycle because the conversation was with non-strategic prospect personnel that were eager for more information but could not make the final decision. OverDrive developed an approach that leveraged Conversation Maps tailor made for each role in the prospect organization including decision makers, managers, technical roles and ultimate users of the software. The conversations became business conversations that aligned with the priorities for each stakeholder role in the prospect organization. Once the business goals and individual needs and priorities were established, AccuBuild’s OverDrive Sales Process leveraged their subject matter expert to walk the prospect through a Technical Overview of the software which was shorter and in line with the interests and objectives of the various prospect stakeholders.
Product and Service Superiority
One of the biggest challenges AccuBuild faced was the total cost of customer acquisition. The executive team believed that the price was too low and the implementation cost too high in relation to the total value the software delivered to customers. So OverDrive developed an “up and running” program that included a customized implementation plan for each new customer..OverDrive techniques were introduced get buy-in from the prospect on the value impact and set expectations for how the software would be installed very early in the sales conversation. The result was the ability to raise the price and margins on the software, qualify prospects in or out faster and improve an already favorable user experience.
Messaging and Positioning
AccuBuild, like many software companies focused on the features and benefits of their software system had aligned their messaging to the IT prospect. We quickly updated the conversation maps and elevator pitch to focus on helping construction companies make faster and better decisions about managing their projects. More importantly, we aligned the value statements to each key role in the construction company to include owners, managers, estimators, IT and staff accountants. Fine-tuning the messaging quickly, aligning the messaging to each “buying” role and adding it to the OverDrive Sales Process allowed AccuBuild to get faster buy-in at all levels during the sales process, significantly reducing the “time to win” (Cycle Time) while attracting better qualified better suited and more profitable prospects for their business.