2012 Winners and Finalists, Lifetime Recipient Jay Nussbaum

The 2012 IES&BD Excellence in Sales & Business Development Awards, held on May 17, 2012 at the Gannett/USA Today Building in McLean, VA, recognized teams and organizations who have demonstrated exemplary performance through leadership, risk taking, innovation, vision and customer development in Sales & Business Development. The Awards honored Greater Washington sales and business development teams for outstanding contributions to their organizations and customers and to the fields of Sales & Business Development.

Hanley Wood (Winner)

Hanley Wood’s innovative sales approach has become a leading example for B2B media companies of how to grow in today’s economic conditions. Dramatic changes in the media landscape forced Hanley Wood to evolve into a savvy digital media enterprise. In an effort to fully streamline the business development process, Hanley Wood merged the magazine and digital media business units, and created an innovative sales training program that produced a dramatic increase in digital media revenue.

BroadSoft

BroadSoft created Xcelerate, a proactive and innovative approach to technology, marketing, sales and consulting support for its diverse global customer base. BroadSoft Xcelerate is comprised of a content-rich website and online portal for customers, as well as a consulting program to deepen the relationship between BroadSoft and its customers.

Carahsoft

Carahsoft employs more than 275 sales, marketing, and business professionals, and has innovated the government reseller paradigm by establishing strategic relationships with the industry’s leading software manufacturers. By providing an unparalleled volume of proactive sales and marketing, Carahsoft has become the master aggregator and largest government partner for these industry giants and 90+ manufacturers and a partner ecosystem that encompasses nearly 700 contractors, resellers, and integrators.

Sevatec

Sevatec was founded in 2003 on the concept of “Seva” or a “commitment to serving others” as the central principle of its way of doing business and nurturing relationships with its clients, employees, partners, and community. Sevatec has created separation between its competition through innovation, capabilities, technologies, our human capital, and just as important, the corporate culture of Seva.

BlackBoard (Winner)

Launched in 2011, Blackboard Learn™ for Sales is a cloud-based learning management solution developed specifically for corporations focused on sales training and professional development. It embeds the concept of social learning directly into the Salesforce CRM platform so sales managers and corporate trainers can enroll in and complete required training courses and tailor training programs across their enterprise. The application improves learning management with social learning tools for online sales and employee training, enablement programs, on-boarding and new product roll outs.

Oracle

Oracle sales teams have been trained in leveraging “Storytelling to Sell More.” This story selling approach focuses on a story book framework that leverages customer experiences leveraging Oracles software. The storytelling approach incorporates humility and often humor to convey the message. The goal of this approach is to get a customer to open up and share with us their real pains and challenges they are now facing by creating an emotional connection. Oracle has become more customer focused leveraging this effective sales approach.

TriNet

TriNet’s sales training program focuses on significantly expanding new Regional Sales Coordinator (RSC) training from a two-week training program consisting of Product Essentials & Sales Essentials, to a comprehensive six-month curriculum that leverages seven distinct and interactive components. By effectively training new and existing sales personnel, TriNet’s market penetration has increased, customer satisfaction has been enhanced, and the company’s revenue generation capabilities have proliferated.

Vorsight

Vorsight’s Sales Prospecting Training is a combination of classroom work, role-playing, and live calls on speakerphone in front of the class. Vorsight’s most unique aspect of sales training is the live calls on speakerphone. Vorsight’s sales trainers actually contact the client’s prospects during the classroom section of the sales training. By doing this demonstration the sales reps are able to actively learn the best ways to engage the prospect.

Centuria (Winner)

Over the past three years, Centuria has built its BD team and processes from the ground up including implementing refreshed bid and proposal review cycles, tracking tools, creating success metrics (and accountability) for new business goals, re-branding the company, and instituting a proactive marketing communications program. Centuria has not rested on its Service Disable Veteran Owned Small Business designation and had positioned ourselves as primes on projects to ensure business continuity once its revenues exceeded its small business designation.

BOWA

Every functional area in BOWA is fine-tuned and customers benefit from the output of an optimum system. The company has developed a customized selling system tuned to the high-end market. Since much of good selling is counter-intuitive, the company supports sales training with ongoing coaching meeting weekly to practice and hone their skills. The result is a company that holds the high ground in its industry, has a base of raving fans and grows while others are shut down and not building at all.

Direct Connect

Direct Connect has its sales management and development process down to a science. The Direct Connect management team has implemented a sales process that has set itself apart from the competition. The sales leaders at Direct Connect, from the top down, are students of sales and the sales process. Leadership is fluent in all of the modern methodologies and understands the strengths and weakness of all the approaches and knows how to choose the proper system for a given situation and go-to-market strategy.

DLT Solutions

DLT addressed its government customers’ need for cloud advisory services with the DLT Cloud Advisory Group. As a pre-sales consulting group, they are focused on helping their sales team make connections for customers and DLT’s partner’s products. In an effort to support the entire DLT team and help them better understand the cloud, the Cloud Advisory Group developed several enablement tools designed to help shape conversations with customers as well as explain how best to engage and leverage the Group.

JK Moving (Winner)

JK Moving delivers a myriad of innovative programs to address specific customer needs. JK’s “Create Your Own Move” program provides cost-saving options for DIY/self-packing and downsizing prior to a move, via partnerships with 123Junk and the DC Chapter of the International Association of Home Staging Professionals. JK also partners with firms that provide complimentary services to its own, allowing JK to offer “bench strength” in areas that clients need but may be ancillary to JK’s core offering.

Learning Tree

When EMC eliminated travel budgets for training and limited classroom training to their Hopkinson, MA facility, they turned to Learning Tree International, their training partner of 15 years, for a solution that would allow EMC staff worldwide to continue receiving critical, effective training, while meeting cost reductions. This led Learning Tree to develop Learning Tree AnyWare™ — a proprietary, online platform that allows individuals to participate real-time in live, instructor-led classroom sessions, from any location.

MicroTech

MicroTech has deep and strong relationships with its Federal Government customers, relationships that are more partnership than vendor-customer. For example, MicroTech provides HD Video Teleconferencing services to the U.S. Missile Defense Agency. With over 500 teleconferencing endpoints embedded within the agency at seven secure MDA installations, MicroTech supports communications across 17 time zones. The solution was recognized with the CIO 100 Award for creating new business value through technology innovation and partnership.

Salsa

When the AFL-CIO (the umbrella federation for many U.S. unions) wanted to update its antiquated CRM and email tools, Salsa jumped at the chance to partner. Salsa and the AFL-CIO vendor-customer partnership implemented new software services for its entire nation-wide user base. For the customer, Salsa implemented three new features – Chapter Management, Content Syndication, and a new Premier Support package. We ended 2011 with a consistent support satisfaction rating of 98 percent or higher.