Helping Professional Services Company
Achieve Revenue Growth

Mike is thoroughly focused on delivering tangible, quantifiable results for his clients. His commitment to identifying the real opportunity for the customer, and ensuring that a solution can remain on target is significant value-add. To do this, Mike is actively challenges the status quo to facilitate a better iteration of business process, delivering those quantifiable results.

Alatair Dinning, PMP

Sr. Architect, Education at Traction on Demand

The Problem

The client is part of an Indian $1 billion dollar multinational technology company, providing information technology and business process outsourcing services. Specifically the client was  a U.S. based professional services division of the multinational company who counted on both on and off shore technical resources focused on twenty four hour Salesforce.com project delivery and support.

The project focus was two of their clients, or each of them an enterprise telecommunication in the same region, who had confirmed Salesforce.com as their corporate CRM respectively.  However, our client was competing against other multi million dollar Salesforce.com partners for the various Salesforce service delivery contracts available at each of these customers.  What they had gained to date prior to our project was small, in contrast to the multi million dollar services contracts available.  The total with both customer was for only $2 million worth of Salesforce service contracts.  Each customer contract won to date was in their respective call centre groups or 1,000+ user Salesforce Service Cloud contracts.  Part of the problem was the service delivery quality on each projects, as well as sales competencies on site to gain more of the available contracts.

The first project accountability usually began at 11pm and 7am meetings communicating with the off-shore Salesforce delivery team regarding their accountability and coordination with the on-shore Salesforce delivery team.

The second project accountability was usually 10am morning meetings communicating with the on-shore Salesforce delivery team for similar accountability and coordination with the off-shore team. 

The third project accountability was guiding both on and off shore teams communication milestones with the respective customer’s technical team about their Service Cloud contract deliverables and timelines.

The fourth project accountability was usually afternoon meetings with prospective new internal clients at each of the customers: from their respective residential division to enterprise division and every function, group or other division in-between.

The top technical problems to be addressed during this project:

  • Security and Cyber Security, for example following specific run book procedures for white listing Salesforce.com servers
  • Application Integration, for example integration with a legacy auto-dialer
  • Configuration and Customization, for example specifics field configuration or workflow customization unique to the telecommunication industry

The top sales challenges to be addressed during this project:

  • Identify new internal prospect, profile and customize presentation and do so in less than a week
  • Follow up,  modify proposal and close in less than a week
  • Simply, do it right, do it fast and close it.

Growing revenues for the client’s division with its specific strategic focus was a priority given the multi million of service contracts available between both telecom customers.  Plus needed to do so while juggling oversight of a large 1,000+ user project for each customer or three teams each: off shore, on shore and clients’ project team.

My prior skills, experience and accomplishments for selling through to leading implementation of hundreds of CRM projects led the US professional services division to hire me.  No question as well that I love a challenge.

The Approach

The first week was simply connecting with all the groups involved in each projects for the respective telecommunication customers:

  • Off-shore technical team meeting for customer one
  • Off-shore technical team meeting for customer two
  • On-shore technical team meeting for customer one
  • On-shore technical team meeting for customer two
  • Technical meetings with customer one’s technical team, with or without on and off shore technical team
  • Technical meetings with customer two’s technical team, with or without on and off shore technical team
  • Sales meetings with customer one’s various divisions, functional groups, and so on
  • Sales meetings with customer two’s various divisions, functional groups, and so on
  • Update meetings with client’s US professional services executives
The second week began addressing technical challenges for each project.  What became immediately clear was the challenge of aligning technical diagnosis between teams as well as technical prescription between teams – for a given challenge.  Hence communication was paramount.  The sales meeting were different because the technical aspect of Salesforce needed to be communicated in lay person terms for each customer’s sales audience.
 
For the third week established a project map comprising of project dashboard tab; off shore tasks; on shore tasks; customer technical team tasks tab.  Establish a similar opportunities map comprising of dashboard of opportunities to follow up; related contacts tab; issues tab; competitor tab.
 
The fourth week introduced complexities as we had to put together sales proposals for potential deals.  Established a template for proposals, with related functional requirements, specifications documents and statement of work.
 
The second month focus was to establish an improved rhythm of bold and decisive action as technical issues popped up through to new opportunities that arose.
 
By the third month we had the projects moving forward steadily as well as a steady stream of incoming opportunities.
 
I took the above approach to capture all possible obstacles be it people or technical.  This allowed me and my colleagues to devise a map to address expected and plan for unexpected.  We tweaked the map in the second month and we were able to turn the corner and become more productive at technical meetings and sales opportunities.  The former required a very structured meeting ending with ‘next steps’ similar to what made Amazon famous for its meeting style.  The  latter establish the critical demo foundation that was required to sell to executives.
 

I leverage my expertise in:

  • Business Analysis and Acumen
  • Organizational Development
  • Communication 
  • Sales Professionalism expertise
  • People Engagement
  • Technology Know-How

The Result

For the existing contract work prior to our project, we were able to address technical challenges from wide area network protocols through to application integration in a timely and cost effective manner.

In a short couple of month we able to ramp up to $6M more Salesforce service delivery contracts with other divisions, functional groups and other project areas at each of the two customers.  The revenue growth represented 300% increase.

The new projects we nicely aligned to our existing expertise and technical competencies that no further technical issues arose to be a concern.

Unfortunately just as we were turning the corner to further expand our success, the parent Indian company suffered major losses in its home country.  And the decision to close our client’s division came down effectively immediately after less than a year.

That said we certainly demonstrate a simple, direct, and comprehensive multi level reporting approach addressed the issues that arose on such a comprehensive set of projects in a bold and decisive manner.

Behind this case study were my skills, experience, and competencies with:

  • Business Analysis and Acumen, to devise the best way to manage the different groups involved in the project and future projects
  • Organizational Development, to achieve better accountability and results from the technical project team
  • Communication, to direct simple, direct and next step meeting agenda
  • Sales Professionalism expertise, to sell at the highest levels of an enterprise organization
  • People Engagement, across all facets of accountability.
  • Technology Know-How

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