2019 Winners and Finalists

The IES Sales Excellence awards recognize companies and organizations that are doing the right things as it relates to sales and business development during challenging times. These companies are implementing and managing processes that drive business, empower their sales and BD professionals, and ensure that they have the tools and training to be exceptional.

The 9th Annual Sales Excellence Awards breakfast were held on Friday, May 31 at the Marriott Fairview Park in Falls Church, Virginia.

Here are the 2019 winners and finalists:

    • Excellence in Sales Innovation (tie)DLT and McDermott Will & Emery LLP. Finalists were General Motors, immixGroup, The Keri Shull Team, NeuStar.
      • DLT’s industry-first, industry-only Enterprise Agreement Platform (EAP) was tailor-made to help public sector customers, such as the U.S. Department of Commerce, consolidate, centralize, and streamline acquisition, while improving asset visibility, reporting, and trend analysis, with technology partners such as Tableau.
      • Law firm McDermott, Will, Emery needed to innovate its way to a new model of sales excellence. The team built a sophisticated training program that draws content from a research-based assessment of its rainmakers, learnings from its Client Listening Program, and best practices from inside and outside of the law.

      Excellence in Sales TrainingHanover Research. Finalists were DISYS, Farm Bureau, Hobsons, MSD, Tyson Group

      • Hanover Research redesigned its training curriculum to maximize the impact of every client interaction, how to navigate difficult conversations, and effective questioning to keep its partners focused on their 3-5-year plans and strategic goals.

      Excellence in Sales ManagementEarth Networks. Finalists were Benzer Pharmacy, Cloudera, Cvent, NVIDIA, Sabre, SyncDog

      • Earth Networks figured out how to align sales and marketing to grow the business through the adoption of a new technology suite in sales and marketing, and developing new organization, processes and policies, such as a Sales and Marketing SLA, new prospecting and lead generation programs and biweekly lead reviews.

      Excellence in Customer Partnering (tie)Carahsoft/Salesforce and Tableau. Finalists were Juniper and Page After Page.

      • Carahsoft and Salesforce created a unique series of campaigns to help grow business within the state and local market. To bring their message directly to this audience, Carahsoft and Salesforce developed a nationwide series of “Innovation Days” events and an extensive multimedia campaign consisting of thought leadership articles from Salesforce executives and customers, an in-depth report, and an “Innovation” microsite.
      • The Department of Veterans Affairs wanted to identify how many veterans were taking advantage of their available benefits and create an outreach program targeted at regions where benefits usage was low. Tableau’s data analysis and mapping capabilities helped them achieve this objective.

The IES recognized Mark Testoni, CEO for SAP NS2 with the IES Lifetime Achievement Award. Gigi Schumm of ThreatQuotient received the 3rd Woman in Sales Leadership Award. Heather Combs, CRO of 3Pillar Global was recognized as the IES Member of the Year.

A portion of the proceeds benefited the Northern Virginia Family Service.

See past winning nominations here.