A New Story that Sizzles
A new Executive Director joined AOC with an ambition to scale the impact of AOC across North America. He found they struggled with telling a consistent, compelling, and catalyzing story across multiple stakeholders.
Outcome: Greater impact
With a new story and visual way to tell it, the team responsible for AOC growth scaled more rapidly, impacting more students.
Norm Schulz, Executive Director, AOC
Solution: Go to Market Narrative Development
AOC and Bruce Scheer of InspireYourBuyers.com partnered together to create a go to market narrative that sizzles. Bruce and his partners did this work pro bono (at no charge). Knowing our impact on students’ lives with AOC was pay enough!
A Unique Go To Market Theme
Problem: A Crowded Market Space
A new VP of Marketing joined Unisys and wanted to relaunch the managed services business with a unique go to market theme and story. They were facing tremendous global competition for global managed services.
Outcome: Revenue Acceleration
With a new go-to-market theme, Unisys saw a bump in revenue growth and a bump in service offerings innovation. Below is a visual taken from a leading industry publication. You see the headline, “Unisys wins 48,000-user Merck ‘people computing’ deal.” Merck, Starbucks, Microsoft, and others were buying the concept “People Computing” and the associated services. This central theme was a powerful catalyst for revenue growth.
Unisys wins 48,000 user Merck ‘people computing’ deal
“Bruce and his team seriously delivered the goods with our new message strategy and story. Their work was instrumental in helping us launch and grow new service lines across multiple verticals.”
Solution: New Go To Market Theme
With a new go-to-market theme, Unisys saw a bump in revenue growth and a bump in service offerings innovation. Below is a visual taken from a leading industry publication. You see the headline, “Unisys wins 48,000-user Merck ‘people computing’ deal.” Merck, Starbucks, Microsoft, and others were buying the concept “People Computing” and the associated services. This central theme was a powerful catalyst for revenue growth.
For more ideas on how to address crowded market space, check out this blog post > and this podcast >
Big New Bet
Problem: New Market Offering
McKesson was launching a new “Big Bet” business around managed services, and were in need of a unique market message and story. With a brand new executive and senior leadership team, the timing was right to invite us to the table to help.
Outcome: Inspired Buyers
They launched the new messaging at the HIMS Conference. The new market message was provocative and resonated with their target buyers – especially CIOs of hospital systems.
“We had people both internally and externally to McKesson that really understood what we were trying to say, and it made so much sense”
Solution: New Message Strategy
We facilitated a process that included outside research and intelligence gathering, insider insight, and internal and external validation to craft a high-impact market message and story. We then delivered sales engagement content and tools to ramp the sales force quickly. We had a high degree of urgency and excitement to accomplish this before the annual HIMSS event, where McKesson wanted to make a significant market impression.
For more ideas on how to launch a new offering, check out this blog post > and this podcast >
Product Centric Messaging to
Economic Buyer Story
Problem: Scattered Content and Conversations
CSC approached us with a strategic alignment problem. How could they get a few different practice areas spread across the different business units to align with a unified market message and story?
Outcome: Alignment for Growth
Below is a visual of the solution framework we developed, allowing sales to have a bigger dialog about the benefits of improving communication and collaboration across the enterprise, and how CSC could bring together the technologies and services to make this happen.
Communications & Collaboration Made Easy
“Our work together resulted in a simple, impactful ‘big idea’ that helped us align our sales and marketing efforts for greater impact.”
Lisa Giles | Business Partner Executive, Global Business Services, CSC
Solution: New Messaging Strategy
We started with a disciplined internal review, discovering who was doing and saying what across CSC in the communications and collaboration space. We then reviewed materials while beginning an external market scan to identify significant customer challenges and concerns.
We uncovered a great deal of pain and disjointedness across communications and collaboration platforms. Then we set our sights to identifying a go-to-market theme for their communication and collaboration technologies and capabilities. We landed on “Communications and Collaboration Made Easy” – easy to use, easy to manage, and easy to innovate. It was beautiful in addressing users, IT management, and innovation concerns. It also played to CSC’s differentiated strengths…bringing it all together in tested and proven solutions that work.
We then constructed the solution framework above. The logic was the customer couldn’t consume everything at once, but CSC was prepared to meet them where they were at and start addressing their most pressing needs in the context of a complete solution framework – useful for today’s and tomorrow’s needs.
For more ideas on how to address inconsistent content and conversations, check out this blog post > and this podcast >
Articulating a Clear Business
Value Proposition
Problem: Tough Industry Gorilla
Brocade was being challenged by the 800-pound gorilla in their market space, and had a newer technology to promote. They knew the degree of automation being enabled around their solution was a market game changer and would save their customers a tremendous amount of time and money. A crucial part of their go-to-market and sales enablement strategy was to design a combined Business Value and TCO Tool that would allow sales reps to quantify the value of switching from the competitor’s switches to Brocade’s new switches.
Outcome: Winning More Deals
We launched a value-selling campaign that was very well received. Sales reps adopted the tool, including the #1 sales rep in the building – Brocade’s CEO who personally used the tool and loved it. Overall, sales reps improved their selling conversations, and marketing increased their relevance by providing sales with ͞qualified leads who had spent significant time reviewing the potential value of Brocade switches while in the marketing site version of the tool.
“We had a compelling business value proposition, and Bruce and his team helped us communicate and quantify it with a first rate demand gen tool, sales enablement tool, and adoption support that aligned sales and marketing for go to market success. They did a fantastic job.”
Gautam Roy | Senior Manager, Product Management & Marketing, Brocade
Solution: Value Selling Program
We reviewed an internal analysis, further developed it, and then simplified it for sales reps and customers to use in their selling conversations. We then developed and deployed their custom sales enablement tool, coupled with training, to help sales reps communicate and quantify the differentiated value Brocade could deliver over the #1 competitive alternative. We also worked with Brocade on a marketing campaign with the Business Value and TCO tool, making a Web-friendly quick calculator version with a call to action to engage with Brocade sales – tightly integrated with their marketing and sales automation platform.
For more ideas on how to address standing apart with a strong value business value proposition, check out this blog post > and this podcast >
New Market Message
Problem: Weak "Me Too" Story
The business unit leader for Alcatel-Lucent’s (ALU) $2.6 Billion Enterprise Business needed a new market message. The market and sellers were confused, and the communications focus was on products and technologies. Sellers were focused on selling 460 products … way too many to comprehend and sell effectively. They were seeking a unifying message and “big idea,” and ways to help align sales, marketing, and product organizations in their go-to-market efforts.
Outcome: Accelerated Revenue Growth
A new go-to-market message strategy and solution framework held for several years as ALU went through many organizational acquisitions and transformations. The work we did was noted as being excellent by sales and marketing leaders within and outside of ALU. We also won a Corporate Executive Board B2B Marketing Campaign of the Year award. Additionally, in a brand survey, we saw an 81% increase in brand perception, 59% of respondents were more likely to consider ALU for their business needs, 97% of respondents felt they clearly understood ALU solutions and 86% felt they clearly understood the value of ALU solutions. Over 400 sales tool apps were installed by ALU and partner sales representatives.
Dy·nam·ic Ent·er·prise:
marked by continuous and transformative growth enabled by interconnected networks, people, processes and knowledge
“Dynamic enterprises think about transforming themselves into an organization that not only has a full view of their customer, but has a full view of their customer within a marketing context, a sales context, and a financial context, basically so that the enterprise itself becomes dynamic in every single function.”
“Dynamic Enterprise is essential in today's environment where people are moving around, and you have to have a lot of resources you need to tie together. So I think you absolutely have to do it, because you can't be fixed to a static environment anymore.
Solution: Compelling Go To Market Message
Our first initiative was messaging development. We applied our North Star message development process to gain perspective on their competitive sphere and general market perceptions. We then worked with internal experts to help create a unifying picture for the business value proposition. We then expressed this as a “big idea” theme for both external and internal audiences. The logic was simple. ALU offerings for the Enterprise centered in the areas of communication and collaboration – central elements in helping organizations be more dynamic. This helped us coin the concept of becoming a “Dynamic Enterprise” and the fundamental ways ALU could help customers be more dynamic.
We next worked to carry this theme across the portfolio of 460 products. We developed a simple solution framework. To become a Dynamic Enterprise, you would need to enable four key things – the People, Processes, Knowledge, and Network. This helped frame the products and technologies ALU was bringing to market and made it so much easier to sell.
Over a few year periods, we supported multiple go to market campaigns with the Dynamic Enterprise theme. One campaign won an industry award. Sales reps were having a challenging time getting customers to the Executive Briefing Center. We decided to shift the paradigm and bring the executive briefing center to them. We built a “virtual hotel” where sellers could showcase how ALU technologies could elevate the guest experience in the hotel, and the associated operational and business value that could be realized in the context of delivering “Dynamic Hospitality.”
For more ideas on how to address a weak "we sound the same" story, check out this blog post > and this podcast >
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