Page 160 - The Sales Acceleration Formula: Using Data, Technology, and Inbound Selling to go from $0 to $100 Million - PDFDrive.com

GPCT to our five top salespeople. Success was defined as a 10 percent increase
in lead-to-customer conversion rates, salesperson productivity, and customer
success within six months.

As I mentioned, the phase one team consisted of our five top salespeople. The
team leader was Andrew Quinn, who at the time was our head of sales training
and the best coach in the company. It was purposely a team of rock stars. The
objective of the first phase was to find a true negative. If this star-studded team,
led by our best coach, could not improve its performance with GPCT, then it was
likely a bad idea to roll the new model out to the entire team. However, if GPCT
did work, it would be worth a shot to see if similar improvements could be
realized with the next tier of salespeople.

For six months under Andrew's leadership, this team gathered a few evenings
per week to discuss GPCT. The team watched film of one another using GPCT
on live discovery calls. They reviewed their opportunity pipelines through the
GPCT lens. They established clear guidelines on how to define the key elements
of each stage of the matrix. They established the best questions to uncover
GPCT with each prospect.

Not surprisingly, Andrew and the phase one team crushed the success metrics we
established for them. Furthermore, an additional, unanticipated positive outcome
was realized. Adoption of GPCT by the broader team had begun organically. The
phase one salespeople happened to be physically spread throughout the inside
sales floor. Their neighbors could, of course, overhear the qualifying calls they
were having with prospective buyers. They started to ask the top performers
about this new model. Word started to spread across the floor about GPCT, the
evening sessions, and the phase one team's initial success. Other salespeople
started to ask the top performers to help them adopt the GPCT approach. It was
beautiful! By the time we were ready to announce GPCT to the entire sales team,
everyone had heard of the new strategy, and 80 percent of the sales floor has
already bought in and were using it.

What a stark contrast to the traditional “annual kickoff” rollout. This
experimental approach yielded two positive outcomes. First, the experimental
approach provided us with a safe, low-risk way for us to test the value of the
GPCT framework. Second, the experimental approach enabled us to gain buy-in
across the floor in a more efficient way than the traditional annual sales kickoff
would have achieved.

The VAR program and GPCT are just two examples of many successful