2013 Winners and Finalists, Lifetime Recipient Anne Altman

The 2013 IES&BD Excellence in Sales & Business Development Awards, was spectacular. It was held on April 12, 2013 at the Gannett/USA Today Building in McLean, VA, and recognized teams and organizations that have demonstrated exemplary performance through leadership, risk taking, innovation, vision and customer development in Sales & Business Development. The Awards honored sales and business development teams from across the country and across multiple industries, for outstanding contributions to their organizations and customers and to the fields of Sales & Business Development.

CEB (Winner)

After studying thousands of sales reps across many industries, CEB showed that classic relationship building is a losing approach, especially when it comes to selling complex, large-scale solutions. The research showed that only the Challenger rep delivers consistently high performance. The results were published in the book, The Challenger Sale: Taking Control of the Customer Conversation. CEB implemented a world-class business practice to help thousands of companies implement the best practices learned from the research.

CarahSoft

Carahsoft has grown to more than $1.465 billion in sales in a very short time. Key to Carahsoft’s success has been the development of a wide-ranging CRM system that integrates sales, marketing, order management, contracts, and accounting to improve operational efficiencies and enforce best practices across the business units. By integrating this functionality, the system provides Carahsoft’s sales, marketing and operations personnel with immediate access to all the information and tools they need to support the tremendous growth in sales.

Deltek

Deltek’s three sales units were using two different CRM systems but needed to achieve a 360 degree view of a client or prospect and to leverage the relationships that other business units may have. As a result, the company produced a refreshed Salesforce.com platform that has delivered the 360 degree view of the customer that Deltek needed to enhance its ability to sell One Deltek. In addition, the system provides a common platform for forecasting, pipeline management and analysis, and lead-generation.

RapidAdvance

RapidAdvance has taken the lead in utilizing cutting edge technologies to meet its sales initiatives. By investing in advanced digital marketing strategies to aid in the lead acquisition process, RapidAdvance has multiplied their prospect acquisition rates many times over, and have shortened their sales cycles. By directly integrating certain analytical software harmoniously with social media, RapidAdvance has improved the speed and efficiency of the sales cycle, as well as increased customer satisfaction; helping to lower attrition rates and increase additional sales.

TriNet (Winner)

TriNet Regional Sales Consultants (RSCs) must have the expertise to delve into product and service components of the TriNet solution as well as utilize sophisticated consultative sales techniques to work with the CEOs or presidents of small and medium businesses. To strengthen their expertise and efficiency, TriNet’s sales training curriculum was completely revamped from a two-week PowerPoint-driven training program consisting of modules such as “Product Essentials & Sales Essentials,” to a comprehensive six-month curriculum that leveraged seven distinct and interactive components.

Cisco

Cisco developed the Partner Sales Academy (PSA) to recruit and intensively train top early-in-career talent for its channel partners and insert them back into the partner sales force. Using multiple advanced TelePresence classrooms, WebEx and other collaborative tools to deliver training, learner satisfaction scores have dramatically increased. The creativity and enthusiasm, infused into the partner sales force by these early-in-career associates, has provided their partner organizations and managers with development opportunities by increasing their coaching, communication and performance management skills.

Force3

The Force 3 Sales Academy is designed to give new sales reps the tools necessary to be successful as a federal salespeople. Curriculum includes the ins and out of the federal government’s IT buying process and a detailed overview of the “The Force 3 Way.” During the Sales Academy process, reps learn a core curriculum that includes company history, successes, how to conduct business in the federal marketplace and a deep understanding of its customers.

Xerox

Xerox partnered with CEB to tackle the following three learning objectives for Managers: teaching managers to be better coaches, learning how to be more adept at observing and identifying effective (or ineffective) Challenger behaviors, and helping managers be much more innovative in supporting their teams to move deals through the pipeline. This large and concentrated investment in the sales team was viewed by Xerox leadership as a strategy to create demand in key markets, rather than reacting to established demand.

Excella Consulting (Winner)

Excella prides itself in cultivating a culture of client service and innovation – with every member of our staff as part of our sales force. Excella begins by teaching all of the consultants an integrity-based business development approach that emphasizes solving problems, rather than selling something. Through the coursework and continuous reinforcement, the consultants learned to listen more and deliver insight through a common sense process to determine first what the problem is, and second to ensure it is a problem Excella would want to solve.

EMC Isilon

EMC Isilon had to face the challenge of the Federal Government sequestration, but through its sales leadership’s understanding of the market and strong management skills, in 2012, EMC Isilon successfully grew its Federal revenue 140%. First, leadership built a team of seasoned account managers, system engineers, and marketing support to architect the vision. They then reevaluated the contract strategy by reviving and identifying key contracts. They also improved Isilon’s channel position with key resellers.

Paradyme Management

Paradyme made a strategic decision to focus on the Federal Government market after much success in State and Local. To do so, they applied a rigorous account and opportunity review process traditionally used by larger and more mature companies and quickly developed a targeted list of federal agencies and corresponding business opportunities using a comprehensive decision matrix. This allowed them to maintain a disciplined business development strategy and avoid the pitfalls of a shotgun approach.

Sage Business Solutions

Sage noticed that many of its competitors wanted experienced leaders but few were willing to offer its employees a chance to gain that experience. To avoid this, Sage designed an onboarding program that incorporated both internal and external resources built on a Sandler baseline. These programs ramp employees quickly and then starts preparing them for the next position above their current grade. This protects the business by helping to fill critical positions immediately and enabled Sage to successfully transition several of its sales reps into management positions.

Learning Tree (Winner)

Learning Tree, with guidance from its Federal Executive Board, proactively developed the Federal Acquisition Certification for Program/Project Managers (FAC-P/PM) curriculum. Beyond meeting the basic mandated compliance standard for certification, Learning Tree focused more specifically on improving those challenges facing program/project performance within the federal government. As a result of this curriculum design, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) selected Learning Tree International as their vendor of choice to fulfill a 5-year $60M commitment to improve the performance of its 15,000-member acquisition workforce.

MicroTech

MicroTech upgraded the Department of Homeland Security’s Briefing Display System. This critical infrastructure compiles, sorts, and analyzes countless data while providing secure communication channels in a user-friendly environment. Through an engaging partnership with DHS, MicroTech was able to successfully adjust to changing requirements while building a system costing less than the initial contract price and reducing total cost, including maintenance and operation fees, saving DHS almost $1 million.

ScienceLogic

ePlus has partnered with ScienceLogic to create new revenue opportunities and to grow its managed service business by creating an entirely new managed services platform based on the ScienceLogic Smart IT software. As a successful and long-time Cisco reseller and partner, ePlus needed to transform its business to support customer needs for the dynamic and rigorous demands of the modern data center. By partnering with ScienceLogic, ePlus was able to create a new, revenue-generating business line.

TidWit

TidWiT helped Pet Partners engage an online community of more than 11,000 of its volunteers. Pet Partners socialized content out to its nationwide community and conducted commercial transactions exceeding $170,000 — all in the first 12 months and done on TidWiT’s award-winning Social Learning cloud platform solution, which was delivered in a handful of weeks, interfaced seamlessly with Pet Partner’s existing website, and is being managed by Pet Partners’ non-technical staff.

Centuria (Winner)

With the end of their small business status looming, Centuria knew it was critical to diversify the business and find opportunities in the Defense market. The BD team honed in on Charleston, SC, the home of Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command (SPAWAR) Atlantic. Through a holistic effort of strategic alliance development, community involvement, and customer intimacy Centuria was able to win prime spots on five key IDIQs for SPAWAR.

Blackboard

Blackboard formed a strategic alliance with Salesforce.com to launch a cloud-based learning management solution developed specifically for corporations focused on sales training and professional development. The result, Blackboard LearnT for Salesforce, was designed to align employee development programs with key corporate priorities and business goals by allowing sales reps, business partners and service teams to directly enroll in and complete training courses on Blackboard’s flagship learning management platform.

FM Academy

FM Academy is a consortium of seven FileMaker Pro software consulting companies around the United States who formed an alliance to promote Apple’s FileMaker Pro software. Members share sales and marketing ideas and expenses. Through extensive cross-selling and partnership development, members report an improved relationship with FileMaker Inc. and increased sales as a result of the alliance.

immixGroup

One of immixGroup’s main differentiators is its Market Intelligence team that provides actionable industry intelligence to its sales teams and clients. The team created a FY13 roadmap campaign that provided clients with the resources and action plan necessary to improve their federal sales practices. Clients utilized these resources to help them navigate through the FY13 federal budget, address new policies and market trends, and prepare for sequestration. With close to 1,000 views, this has been one of the firm’s most successful sales tactics.