Sales Awards Blog

The Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service recognize the achievements of call center, customer service, and sales professionals worldwide. Recognize your company's sales performance and nominate individuals by submitting entries for sales awards that highlight sales excellence. (Request your entry kit for the 2012 awards and it will be emailed to you right away.  The entry deadline is November 18.)

Individual Sales Awards:

1. Senior Sales Executive of the Year
Recognizing senior sales executives with titles such as Chief Sales Officer.  This category may also be used to recognize senior corporate executives for their role in driving sales achievements.

2. Worldwide VP of Sales of the Year
Recognizing VPs of sales with responsibility for sales performance on a global level.

3. National VP of Sales of the Year
Recognizing VPs of sales with responsibility for sales performance on a national level.

4. Sales Director of the Year
Recognizing the achievements of sales directors at organizations of any size, of any type.

5. Sales Manager of the Year
Recognizing the achievements of sales managers and sales professionals with a managerial role at organizations of any size, of any type.

6. Sales Operations Professional of the Year
Recognizing sales executives and sales professionals with a managerial role for their achievements in managing sales organizations that run effectively, efficiently and in support of business strategies and objectives.

7. Sales Training or Education Professional of the Year
Recognizing sales executives and sales professionals with a managerial role who manage, design, or deliver sales training or education in any aspect of work life.

8. Sales Representative of the Year
Recognizing individual sales representatives for their personal contributions to organizations’ sales results.

All entries in these categories require an essay of up to 500 words describing the nominee’s accomplishments since July 1, 2010 a brief biography (up to 100 words) of the nominee and an optional inclusion of links to online news stories, videos, photographs, press releases, etc. that support your nomination. See all of the Sales & Customer Service categories here.

Need help choosing the best category? Contact us at help@stevieawards.com.

As the November 18 deadline for The Stevie® Awards for Sales & Customer Service approaches, we encourage everyone to submit their entries for the 2012 awards as soon as possible- get your entry kit here.

Here are the top 10 reasons why you should enter:

1. Great staff recognition. Applying for the Stevie Awards is a simple (and affordable) way to recognize your employees' sales excellence and customer service excellence.

2. Free publicity. Stevie Awards winners are not only recognized in an awards ceremony but receive acknowledgment globally via press coverage and our radio cast and Internet streaming. 

3. Company size equality. You don't have to be a big company to win a Stevie. Small organizations have just as much chance to win sales awards and customer service awards as big companies do. 

4. Flexible categories. There are dozens of categories for customer service, call center, contact center, and sales professionals, teams, and departments.  And there are a range of categories to recognize products and services and solution providers.

5. Networking opportunities. Stevie Award winners will be recognized during a gala awards dinner attended by executives from around the world.

6. Low entry fees. The entry fees are nominal compared to the publicity boon your firm can reap when you become a Stevie winner.

7. Earn industry status. The Stevie Awards for Sales and Customer Service is a great way to benchmark your achievements against competitors in your industry.

8. Oscar-like trophies. The Stevie Award trophies are magnificent - among the most coveted prizes in the world and produced by the same company that the Oscars use.

9. Great PR for your company. Stevie winners can get extra copies of their awards to share with employees, executives, and clients.

10. The Stevie Awards are the world's premier business awards - and you know you and your team deserve that kind of positive recognition.

What's your number one reason for applying for the Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service?

Q&A with Leslie Stretch, President and CEO, Callidus Software, a provider of sales performance platforms which won the Stevie Award for Computer Software Company of the Year in The 2011 International Business Awards. (Entries for The 2012 International Business Awards open in January, request an entry kit and join our mailing list for all Stevie Awards updates!)

What are your top 3 tips for improving sales performance?

1. Hire the right sales people. Hire scientifically using search-and-selection methodology; use social media and video interviews on the web; and hire fast. 

2. Coach scientifically.  Usually 80% of your sales people will be B players, while 20%— the A players—will bring in 80% of the sales.  You need to improve the B players with regular coaching and training sessions.  Track and trace the behaviors of your sales staff, comparing B with A. Use tools to build up the coaching plans. Avoid generalist HR reviews. They don’t work with sales people.

3. Make it easier for your sales people to sell, but also make it easier for your customers to buy.  If we make things too complicated for the customer, why should they buy?  Put everything a sales person needs in one place and make all your information accessible.  If you make it easier for the sales staff, you’ll dramatically increase sales.  

What item of news recently caught your eye and why?

The acquisition by Hewlett-Packard of the British software firm Autonomy. This piece of news fascinates me, as Autonomy is a company that was started by Cambridge University scientists that has now been bought for $12 billion. Silicon Valley seems to be getting bigger, with recent acquisitions such as Google’s purchase of Motorola Mobility ($12.5 billion) and ABC News’ alliance with Yahoo!  

Do you have a favorite business app?

My favorite application at the moment is our own iCentera, a.k.a. Callidus Central.  Wherever I am, I have my Mail open and iCentera, which has all the information about my customers that I need to know.  Everyone at Callidus is an iCentera user.  It keeps us up-to-the-minute on everything that is happening.  

On my phone, I have to say my favorite app is Talking Tom.  The cat repeats everything you say in a funny voice yet is very good at picking up accents, even those from the North of England. My wife is from Manchester, so I use the app to create reprimands to my children that they’ll think are from their mother.  

If you could choose another profession, what would it be?

I’m a frustrated musician and would happily spend more time playing the guitar or the piano. 

What quality or qualities do you most value in your business associates?

Honesty, loyalty, and persistence.  I find that the expectation of a lot of people who come to Silicon Valley is that they are going to phone in rich in just a couple of years.  But the reality is that it takes much longer.  There are a lot of overnight successes here that actually took a decade or more. Not only does it take a long time, you have to overcome adversity.  I admire people who have vision, can see where they are going, and have the tenacity and determination to stick with it.  

What do you think is the worst bad habit to have at work?

Managers who take liberties with their staff’s time.  As a manager myself, it’s something that I’m afraid I have to confess I do too often, but it’s important to set a line between work and home life and try not to cross it.  It’s bad for people if you soak up their personal time. It builds resentment and alienation.  It’s counter-productive, yet you think you are being super-productive because you are working out of normal hours.  

As someone at the top of your profession, what keeps you inspired or makes you hit the ground running in the morning?

The job is never done.  The vision we have for Callidus Software is to be a Software as a Service (SaaS) company that provides the best tools, is the best company to work for, is the best company to invest in, and is the best company to buy from.  I only started on this four years ago, so there’s still a long way to go, but it is the need to make Callidus Software the #1 SaaS company that drives me on.  

About Leslie Stretch:

Leslie Stretch is President and CEO of Callidus Software. Under Leslie’s direction, Callidus has transformed into a recurring revenue based business that is the leader in sales talent lifecycle management solutions and business process outsourcing. These solutions include sales selection and onboarding, goal management, incentives and rewards management, and sales talent optimization for the sales force and call centers. At Callidus, Leslie has also pioneered patent-pending methods for successfully using performance indexes to measure and predict propensity for success in hiring different sales roles.  

Prior to joining Callidus Software’s executive board, Leslie worked for Sun Microsystems for nine years. At Sun, he held the position of Senior Vice President of Global Channel Sales and was the Managing Director of Sun Microsystems U.K. Ltd. Before joining Sun, Leslie held senior sales positions at Oracle Corporation U.K. and was instrumental in accelerating the growth of its Scottish and Canadian operations. Throughout his career, Leslie successfully directed and motivated large sales organizations and facilitated strategic deals.

About Callidus Software^®

Callidus Software is the market and technology leader in Sales Performance Management (SPM). Callidus' award-winning SaaS platform—the Callidus Cloud—is a comprehensive SaaS suite designed to help businesses drive more effective selling at each stage of the sales talent lifecycle, from improved sales hiring—the foundation of strong sales performance—to improved campaign execution, to high frequency coaching and development. The Callidus Cloud suite includes Callidus' 100% multi-tenant, high-availability SaaS infrastructure; its Sales Selection, Sales Effectiveness, Sales Performance, and Learning modules; SPMConnect for data management; and Reporting & Analytics. Callidus Software powers more than 2.5 million users across the globe. For more information, please visit www.callidussoftware.com.

We've published a 13 minute video called How to Enter the 2012 Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service.

The video covers the steps you should follow if you're at all interested in winning the top sales award on the planet.

Entries are now being accepted for the 6th annual Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service.  You'll find the entry kit online, here.

If you have questions about how to submit nominations after watching the video, write to us at help@stevieawards.com.  We're here for you!

The Brooks Group of Greensboro, North Carolina USA was named Sales Training Practice of the Year earlier this year in the sales awards categories of the Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service, the world's top honors for customer service, call center, and sales professsionals. Here we take a closer look at what drives this sales training firm.  (Entries for the 2012 edition of the awards are now being accepted.)

The sales professionals at The Brooks Group believe in continuity of coaching, customized training, and a consistent focus on client ROI.  This, they believe, is what drives success when it comes to implementing a sales system. 

They also know that if a salesperson follows a proven, tested selling system there is a 93% chance of making the sale. Without a system, the odds drop to 42%. Why? Because most sales people focus on the end stages of the sale and neglect the early-stage actions … or leave them entirely up to chance.

A tested, proven sales system will direct the sales professional's attention to the entire sales process.  Following are the five steps that are used by The Brooks Group (TBG) in their proprietary deployment methodology:

Step 1: Assess/Screen

TBG’s powerful TriMetrix™ assessment tool goes beyond most personality-based tests by providing an insight into behavioral drives and attitude.  It tells the client where to place people for maximum results; how to coach medium and high performers for maximum results; why lower performers haven't lived up to expectations and what to do about it; and what non-personality characteristics to look for in new hires to better predict real-world performance.

Getting the right people to perform is the fastest way to translate training to sales. 

Step 2: Design/Customize

While the fundamental dynamics of selling don't change, how a successful sales professional applies those dynamics does change with the type of sale and industry.  TBG tailors its application for each unique industry and market so people are trained in actionable skills and techniques that will work in their field. 

Step 3: Delivery

TBG’s seasoned sales professionals and coaches can train a sales team, or they can "train the trainers," giving them everything they will need to successfully implement a customized training system.   TBG can even grant a license to re-brand its proprietary training under a client’s corporate aegis.  TBG also runs sales and sales-management seminars, and will work with clients to uncover their objectives and recommend the best delivery method possible.

Step 4: Reinforcement

A training program should continue after the sales force gets back in the field to implement what they’ve learned, so TBG’s training doesn’t stop when people leave the program.  Implementing a sales system requires reinforcement to make the training stick, so after 12 weeks a TBG coach leads the team through a competitive reinforcement process. 

Step 5: Measuring Return on Effort/Investment

TBG provides clients with the tools and processes to measure its training impact and results. This has proved to be an excellent customer-retention tool and is part of the reason why 84% of TBG clients who sign on for six months end up staying for more than five years.

In sum, everyone at The Brooks Group is tasked with working every day to “Elevate the Sales Profession.” An earnest belief in the idea that professional
sales people engage in a noble calling drives each member of the team to work hard to improve the skills, attitudes, and reputations of salespeople.

On receiving their Stevie Award earlier this year, Jeb Brooks, Executive Vice President of The Brooks Group, commented: “The entire team at The Brooks Group is very proud to receive this level of recognition by the Stevie® Awards and its impressive panel of judges. This is a testament to the sales philosophy we preach: Commit to making your customers successful and amazing things happen.”

About Will Brooks
Called one of America's most thoughtful sales writers and speakers, Jeb Brooks is the co-author of the books Perfect Phrases for the Sales Call and High IMPACT Selling. He has appeared in numerous publications including the Wall Street Journal. Jeb serves as Executive Vice President of The Brooks Group, one of the world’s Top Ten Sales Training Firms as ranked by Selling Power Magazine. He writes for The Brooks Group's popular Sales Blog, Sales Evolution. His greatest professional pleasure, however, comes from actively selling. As he was once told: “Selling is like shaving. If you don't do it everyday, you're a bum!”

About The Brooks Group
Founded in 1977, The Brooks Group is a sales and sales-management training firm that has helped more 3000 organizations in over 400 industries improve their businesses by creating and sustaining top-performing sales and business development programs. Headquartered in Greensboro, North Carolina, the company offers its clients proven sales and sales-management methodologies, industry-leading reinforcement tools, accountability systems, and sales-management training.  For more information go to: http://www.brooksgroup.com

What do you think of this five-step process?

Salesify, Inc. of Redwood City, California USA, a provider of outsourced B2B sales and marketing services, won the Stevie® Award for Sales Department of the Year - Services in the 2011 Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service. (Entries for the 2012 awards are now being accepted.)  Here we look at how the department’s system works.

For a company in the business of accelerating revenue for its customers, it seemed only natural to turn the talents of its sales team to its own sales efforts.

Using the same system that Salesify uses for its clients, the telesales team turned its talents to growing the company’s revenues.

The Salesify system has four tiers: 

1. Contact Discovery

The company’s research team developed its own customized B2B contact list containing current and accurate data.

2. Account Profiling

The team used a combination of online and telephone research to compile account intelligence profiling prospective accounts.

3. Lead Generation

The team leveraged creative content to nurture inquiries. They verified interest to confirm the presence of the most critical components that make up the lead: Interest and need.

4. Appointment Setting

Salesify’s experienced appointment-setting team further qualified leads and set confirmed appointments, which were then converted into highly qualified business opportunities.

High Productivity

The team’s overall productivity was high, with an average dial out—without the use of dialers—of 136 calls per day across a team of 8 sales people. With this level of activity, the team was able to generate on average 12 appointments per rep per month. In addition, the team closed an average of 18 new logo accounts per month—an average of 2.25 new deals per rep.

Quality Customers

While the range of companies that the team targeted and converted to customers included both small and large accounts, including Fortune® 500-listed companies, approximately one-fifth of closed deals included companies that were category leaders.  Revenue growth was also impacted because the team progressively increased the average deal size by almost double across all deals.

“In addition to amazing productivity, the sales team successfully built traction with new product offerings allowing for an increase of our company’s service portfolio. For example, the team successfully added event promotion services into the mix this year, which they were able to both cross sell to existing customers and sell to prospects,” said Raj Hajela, Salesify COO and head of Sales.

Retaining Customers

The Salesify sales team worked closely with Operations to integrate new back-end delivery processes and manage customer expectations of deliverability, which enabled Salesify to close 2010 with no meaningful customer attrition. Customer escalations were also reduced to 18% over the previous year.  While this speaks volumes for the Operations teams' evolution and commitment to high quality, it also reflects the sales team's effectiveness in setting the right expectations to matching the ability of the delivery teams.

In 2010, without any increase in team-size, the telesales team was able to deliver year-over-year growth for Salesify of over 50%, despite the depressed economy.

The company has made the Silicon Valley Business Journal’s Fast 50 for two years running (2009 and 2010) and was named to Inc. magazine’s 2010 list of fastest-growing private companies. 

Commented Raj: “Our strong productivity combined with the team’s ability to listen to the customer and meet customer needs resulted in our strongest revenue growth to date. Salesify is honored to be a winner of a 2011 Stevie® Award. Our sales team’s unique accomplishment is testimony to Salesify’s ability to support the success of our customers and fuel their growth.”

About Raj Hajela

Raj Hajela has 20 years experience in high technology sales, sales operations,
and inside sales. As co-founder and COO of Salesify, Raj manages the company’s contact centers and internal sales team. Prior to co-founding Salesify, Raj was responsible for all direct and channel sales for Virtela in India.  He established Virtela’s first India-based B2B inside sales team to support all the company’s U.S. field sales teams. Previously, Raj had been Head of Business Development at TangibleData, had held a senior sales role at MCI, and had led a successful business consulting practice with clients such as Comdial Corporation and Innodata.

About Salesify

Salesify, a provider of outsourced B2B demand-generation services, helps its clients create pipeline and accelerate revenue by identifying, profiling, nurturing, and contacting the right decision makers within their clients’ targeted customer and prospect accounts. Salesify services include custom, targeted B2B contact lists; account profiling and competitive research; phone-based lead nurturing campaigns and content syndication; appointment setting; inbound lead generation qualification services; and CRM database cleansing. Salesify delivers high quality, cost-effective services and programs tailored to address each customer’s unique requirements. With over 300 clients, Salesify has a proven track record of helping some of the world’s largest technology companies drive revenue. For more information, visit salesify.com or call 1-888-557-2537.

Q&A with Jeffrey Max, CEO of Venda, Inc., a provider of multichannel commerce solutions, which won the Stevie Award for Best Business Service Web Site in the web awards categories of The 2011 American Business Awards. Here we talk with Jeffrey Max, CEO, about convergent commerce and the next evolution in marketing.

What three ways can retailers and brands best utilize multichannel marketing to increase sales?

Nowadays we are seeing a convergence of disparate channels into a cohesive brand and shopping experience.  The following are just three of the ways retailers and brands can take advantage of this:

1. Use social media as an engine for the whole shopping experience
Merchants and businesses used to think only in terms of running the different sales outlets for their business—brick-and-mortar stores, online channels, social media—as different and separate entities.   The Internet was only used for online sales, whereas today it is the primary channel for social media, brand projection, online engagement, or brand affinity and PR.  Companies should now consider social media as an engine for the whole shopping experience, and since people prefer to carry out this activity with friends and family, social media is a natural fit.

2. Make sure your channels are mobile-optimized
The most social tool of all is the mobile phone, which allows customers, devotees, and fans to engage with brands wherever and whenever they choose. Customers used to have to walk into a shop or sit in front of a computer to find what they were looking for. Now engagement can be all-pervasive.

3. Embrace and prepare for location-based services
Using the leverage of online shopping empowers customers to shop or purchase wherever and whenever they want. New opportunities utilizing location-based attributes of mobile technology can enable brick-and-mortar stores to engage with the customer and can allow merchants to promote specials, discounts, and new items when the customer is physically in or near the store. Overall, businesses need to think in a holistic way and embrace a range of technical tools, for example linking websites to in-store promotions. 

What item of news recently caught your eye and why?

This story is a few months old now, but I was fascinated to learn that when Larry Page returned as CEO of Google back in April, one of the first things he did was to outlaw multitasking at meetings, one of my pet peeves.

Do you have a favorite business app?

From the consumer’s perspective, I like to keep an eye out for shopping apps. One of the most useful is Catalogue by The Find (for iPhone and iPad), which delivers a very usable interface for scanning company catalogs. If you find something that interests you, simply tap on the screen and it will take you to that catalog’s website so that you can purchase it.  This app definitely expands boundaries for consumers.

If you could choose another profession, what would it be?

I started out as a professional yacht captain delivering large yachts around the world; I then went on to have a fruitful career as a commodities trader on Wall Street, which morphed into a software and services company providing risk management tools for banks and securities exchanges. While I’ve been fortunate to have already had several exotic and exciting careers, working now in eCommerce offers exposure to a wide variety of organizations—from fashion to government agencies to museums—and at the same time it’s at the forefront of  how people interact with technology and how it influences their lives every day. This provides all the intellectual stimulation that I need.

What quality or qualities do you most value in your business associates?

Integrity, enthusiasm, and execution. A good business relationship is built on trust and execution.  Both the provider and the consumer expect us to deliver, while at the same time we expect our customers to operate with integrity.

What do you think is the worst bad habit to have at work?

Multitasking.  I’ve already mentioned that Larry Page has banned it from Google meetings, but across my professional career I’ve found more and more that the attention span of individuals is dropping, along with standards of professional courtesy. I find that there are real business benefits to being fully present and engaged when meeting with clients.

As someone at the top of your profession, what keeps you inspired or makes you hit the ground running in the morning?

Every new day brings new opportunities and challenges. We are working on the creative side of new technologies that are changing the way things are done.  Right now the main growth in retail is online, and these new tools are influencing the way people live their lives.  So, other than actually saving lives like a doctor or surgeon, being a catalyst for change is highly exciting and rewarding.

About Jeffrey Max

Jeff joined Venda in 2003, and was responsible for establishing the company’s North American operation. A serial technology entrepreneur, Jeff brings the company more than 25 years of leadership and experience creating, growing, and transitioning software and services companies.

Jeff has been a leading voice of innovation in the eCommerce industry, beginning with Venda’s introduction as the first enterprise-scale, cloud-based eCommerce offering in the US, to the Company’s current vision of omni-channel Convergent Commerce.

Prior to joining Venda, Jeff was a principal at PLR Advisors, a capital market advisory firm, CEO of Whitelight Technologies (sold to SunGard in 2003), Director of International Market Development at OptiMark Technologies, and CEO of Systems Development Corporation (sold to Telkurs in 1996). He currently serves on the Boards of several cloud-computing start-ups.

About Venda

Venda is a global provider of multichannel commerce solutions. Customers embrace comprehensive online, mobile and social commerce, international expertise, end-to-end fulfillment solutions, and transparent pricing that yields superior ROI. Venda customers include industry leaders Tesco, Superdrug, JVC, Urban Outfitters, Condé Nast, and Jimmy Choo. Venda has offices in New York, London, and Bangkok.

What do you think of Jeff's advice for retailers and brands?

Bulldog Solutions, Inc. of Austin, Texas USA won the Stevie Award for Demand Generation Program of the Year in the sales awards categories of the 2011 annual Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service, the world's premier honors for customer service, call center, and sales professionals.  Bulldog Solutions won for their work with client Motorola on “Mobile Advantage 2010: Change the Game,” a virtual conference produced by Motorola Enterprise Solutions.  (Entries for the 2012 edition of the awards are now being accepted.)

Mobile Advantage 2010: Change the Game is a virtual conference (a “trade show” offered solely as an online experience) that was produced by Motorola Enterprise Solutions on October 6, 2010 and offered subsequently in an on-demand capacity. The opt-in conference featured thought leaders from Motorola and in-depth looks at devices, applications, and technologies being developed by Motorola for mobile enterprise applications including field service, field sales, retail, healthcare, utilities, manufacturing, and transportation/distribution. It was designed to re-enforce Motorola’s leadership in enterprise solutions, strengthen partner relationships, and generate sales opportunities.

Virtual conferences are generally produced by a publication or trade group, with individual sponsors across a range of solutions providing “booths” and information and receiving lead data in return.  In this case, however, Motorola and its demand-generation agency Bulldog Solutions used the event to showcase Motorola’s own expertise and cutting-edge products, including the recently introduced ES400 Enterprise Digital Assistant.

Seeing the Big Picture

The virtual conference gave Motorola partners a chance to understand the Motorola Enterprise Solutions group “big picture” as well as to take a closer look at specific services and solutions by visiting online booths and downloading briefings and other information. Using the virtual conference platform, Motorola was able to collect data on registrants’ interests and behavior—data that would drive targeted programs post-event.

“The virtual conference strategy that we created for Motorola made it possible for the organization to collect useful data on registrants’ interests that could then be used to drive more targeted lead-generation programs after the event,” said Rob Solomon, CEO and founder of Bulldog Solutions.

The virtual conference featured 10 booths, covering vertical practice areas as well as specific solutions. Four Webinars and four “scheduled chats” were offered throughout the day, highlighted by a featured speaker, former NFL Head Coach Brian Billick. Original videos were used to draw attention to key issues. In order to generate registrant activity, the Motorola team partnered with the NFL to create a series of sweepstakes, offering prize levels based on depth of participation and engagement in the event.

Exceeding Goals

Motorola far exceeded its original registration goal, securing 1,761 registrants (the goal was 1,500). Subsequent to the live viewing, the conference remains online in an “on-demand” capacity. The level of engagement and quality of the leads, combined with a targeted follow-up plan, continues to generate additional registrants.

“This campaign is a great example of the creativity that BtoB organizations can use to produce demand-generation programs that spur prospect interest and create buzz while positioning their companies as thought leaders in their respective industries,” concluded Solomon.

About Rob Solomon

Rob Solomon is the founder and chief executive officer of Bulldog Solutions. He is an experienced entrepreneur who is passionate about sales and marketing. Before establishing Bulldog Solutions, Rob was the founder, chairman and CEO of USOL Holdings, Inc. ("USOL"), a publicly traded telecommunications company with offices and operations throughout the United States.

Rob currently serves on several corporate and non-profit boards. He is the founder of the Austin Chapter of Young Entrepreneurs Organization ("YEO") and an active member in the Central Texas Chapter of Young Presidents Organization ("YPO"). Rob also recently graduated from the Birthing of Giants program, a three-year leadership program sponsored by YEO, The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, The Kaufman Foundation and Inc. Magazine.

Rob holds a Bachelor of Business Administration from The University of Texas at Austin.

About Bulldog Solutions, Inc.

Bulldog Solutions transforms BtoB marketers' ability to deliver sales-ready prospects to meet business objectives and prove marketing's impact on sales.  Bulldog Solutions is a BtoB demand-generation specialist recognized for its approach by thought leaders in the industry. Bulldog Solutions is headquartered in Austin, Texas. For more information go to www.bulldogsolutions.com.

MD On-Line, Inc. of Parsippany, New Jersey, USA won the Stevie Award for Telesales Team of the Year in the 2011 Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service. Entries are now being accepted for the 2012 edition of the awards - learn more at www.stevieawards.com/sales.

Several years ago, a study conducted by independent consultants Milliman Inc. concluded that the USA’s healthcare system could save an estimated $86 billion annually by adopting one procedural change: utilizing electronic data interchange (EDI) technology to automate claim filing, status inquiries, referrals, pre-authorizations, and eligibility.  $11 billion alone would come just from converting physicians’ offices from paper to electronic claims submissions, with estimated savings of more than $42,000 per year per provider. 

These dollar savings don’t even take into account the extra benefits that would
accrue from faster payments and turnaround on claim errors, improved cash flow, and patient satisfaction.

Not surprisingly, MD On-Line (MDOL), a proven leader in healthcare information technology transactions, was able to leverage these statistics as it methodically built a customer base of over 38,000 physicians in its first 13 years of existence.  That meant that the early-adopting customers had all been converted, leaving a pool of smaller, reluctant prospects for engagement and adoption. 

Targeting Reluctant Prospects

From July 2009, six highly motivated and internally trained telesales professionals at MDOL began targeting that high-hanging fruit.  The highly successful results demonstrated their ability to build from a strong base and to find innovative ways of exploding sales with the most reluctant prospects.

Four of the ways they achieved this were by:

1. Identifying new strategic selling approaches and closing an average of 430 new customers every month, which grew the total MDOL customer base by more than 20% to over 45,000 in the space of a year;

   
2. Leveraging relationships with health insurers to secure their lists of
paper-submitting providers, and developing special offers to attract the most
reluctant provider offices, including offers of free electronic transactions and packages that enabled offices to file to all insurers affordably;

3. Reaching out to the largest managed Medicaid Plan in the State of New
York with a plan for non-emergency transportation providers to submit their taxi or private ambulance charges electronically, thereby totally eliminating a time-wasting and paper-laden process that had been consuming costs for decades. 

4. Engaging MDOL’s largest insurer client with a promise to convert 60,000 claims from paper-based physicians to EDI in the first year. The result:  Over 1.1 million claims were converted in the first year, and the growing claims volume has spurred a multi-year contract extension, over 3,000 new customers, and monthly revenue increases of over $20,000.

New Challenges Ahead

The telesales team is under the direction of MDOL’s Sales SVP, Nick Dannenbaum.  The team is young by almost any company’s standards, with half of them just completing their first year at MDOL.

“To be recognized in this way by The Stevie Awards bodes extremely well for the success of our company's future initiatives,” said Nick Dannenbaum on receiving the award early in 2011. He added: “If this is what the team could accomplish behind our core product that has been on the market for more than a decade, I can't wait to see what they will be able to do with our new products.”

The team’s next challenge is learning about and selling the Company’s first Practice Management Software, and enlisting customers in the company’s first Electronic Health Records.  Both products are designed to drive further cost and time efficiencies for healthcare providers and to transition MDOL’s customers into the next generation of healthcare EDI.  Based on their performance, selling new and innovative should be no problem.

About Nicholas Dannenbaum

Nicholas Dannenbaum joined MDOL in 1997 as its first Account Executive, personally securing thousands of customers and signing the Company’s 35 largest insurance/payer clients.  Today, Nick is SVP Sales and leads the Telesales, Provider/VAR Sales, and Account Management teams, while playing an integral role in the marketing of MDOL and in shaping the Company’s strategic direction.  One of the early visionaries to enter Healthcare EDI, Nick has become one of the industry’s most experienced Healthcare EDI sales and marketing professionals and is dedicated to the training and growth of his teams. 

About MD On-Line

MD On-Line Inc. is a leading provider of electronic data interchange (EDI) solutions that facilitate the critical connection between doctors and payers. Its offerings enable electronic data capture and entry, and claim and transactional data submission to payers. Co-branded and endorsed by more than 30 major insurers and increasing its presence in providers' offices of all sizes, MD On-Line is transacting the business of healthcare, helping to make the healthcare system significantly more cost-effective by eradicating inefficiencies. In addition to claims processing, MD On-Line offers real-time services for eligibility verification, referrals, claim status inquiries, and electronic remittance advice (ERAs). Its "all-payer" EDI solutions encompass a network of more than 2,000 payer organizations and are used by more than 45,000 healthcare providers nationwide. For additional information visit www.mdon-line.com.

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Xactly Corporation of San Jose, California, has won multiple Stevie Awards in The American Business Awards over the years, including for Best New Company of the Year in 2008 and for Best Overall Company of the year (up to 100 Employees) in 2010.

For years, companies have known that how they compensate their sales teams directly impacts business performance.  To quote from Jack Welch, former chairman and CEO of GE: “Show me a company’s various compensation plans, and I’ll show you how its employees behave.”  The right sales plans can motivate selling behavior to increase profits, control expenses, and drive consistent quarter-over-quarter results.

For most companies, however, the cost of traditional enterprise applications to automate this function was out of reach. According to Xactly Corporation founder and CEO Christopher Cabrera, the incentive sales process in nearly 90 percent of companies was “still managed by manual, spreadsheet-driven processes that breed errors and disputes, don't cost-effectively scale, can't easily accommodate plan changes and additions, and ultimately don't align sales behaviors with corporate goals to effectively drive profits.”

 

Early in his career, while head of operations at a large software company, Cabrera had found himself time and again forced to walk away from sales opportunities because the mid-market-sized company he was working for simply couldn’t afford the initial costs and ongoing maintenance of an enterprise sales incentive compensation application.

Around this time, an on-demand software delivery model was starting to gain
noticeable traction.  Despite Cabrera’s evangelizing this concept, his company balked at using an on-demand offering.  Cabrera left that company and went on to launch Xactly in March 2005.

A Simple Idea
Cabrera’s idea was to take a complicated and challenging function—managing sales compensation—and automate it to become a simple and cost-effective solution for the huge and underserved mid-market.  His company, Xactly, has done exactly that, and has been instrumental in radically opening up the market.

By 2007, Xactly had signed 100 customers.  The company was managing more compensation, and more compensation complexity, than any other on-demand vendor today.  Xactly software was helping its customers to manage nearly $1 billion in sales compensation annually. 
 
Sales Performance Management
In 2008, Xactly moved into a much larger emerging-market category called Sales Performance Management (SPM).  In 2006, Gartner had predicted that “a sales performance management market will coalesce around best-of-breed vendors largely originating from the sales incentive compensation management market.” 

Xactly’s compelling value proposition for potential customers, said Cabrera, was that “the convergence of SPM and on-demand SaaS delivery has created a new, affordable way to improve sales effectiveness. We let companies automate and integrate strategic sales and finance business processes, and let individuals, from sales reps to top management, make better, more informed and timely decisions.

“In the on-demand world, the customer holds all the cards and can kick an on-demand vendor out of the game at any time. Hence we're driven by the notion that each customer's business must be earned anew every day. Xactly's over 90 percent customer-renewal rate is, we think, testament to our culture.”

Building upon its leadership in on-demand Sales Compensation Management (SCM) software, Xactly was the first vendor to deliver in this market.
 
Stellar Results in Uncertain Times
In spite of the downturn, Xactly continued to deliver stellar business results in both 2009 and 2010.  At the same time, the company increased year-over-year revenues by more than 50 percent , and grew its customer base by more than 60 percent—including a sharp increase in international customers.

The company’s success is due in part to its strong customer-centric culture and ability to help customers turn sales into a strategic competitive weapon. With both excellence in service and solutions—Xactly Incent™ and Xactly Express™—Xactly has maintained a renewal rate of more than 90 percent over the past three years. In addition, more than a third of the company’s customers added additional subscribers or modules.

According to Cabrera: “Incenting the right sales behavior has never been more important. The value of automating compensation and incenting right in order to improve sales results was evident throughout our customer base, as our projects consistently made it to the top of the ROI stack.”

Customer Joe Dawe, Senior Director of Business Operations at Akamai, also added, “Xactly Incent delivers incredibly rich information for making strategic and tactical decisions around our global sales compensation and performance. It has removed a significant distraction for finance and sales, lets us focus on
other business challenges, and enables us to more effectively address our market.”

On the partner front, Xactly has a close association with salesforce.com, which recently made a strategic investment in Xactly. In addition, Xactly continued its strong relationship with Oracle as a member of its CRM On Demand Inner Circle, an elite group of key partners forming an integrated ecosystem of complimentary solutions offering extended value to Oracle CRM On Demand customers.

The Workforce Behind the Success
Cabrera is justifiably proud of his company, but is most proud of the workforce behind its success. Xactly remains committed to providing a positive work environment and giving back to local communities, under the umbrella of the Xactly One™ program.  Xactly employees have participated in building houses for a local Habitat for Humanity, orchestrated a food drive for Feeding America, partaken in the American Cancer Society's Daffodil Days Campaign, and much more.

About Christopher Cabrera
Christopher Cabrera has more than two decades of senior management experience at both early-stage and public companies. At these companies, he managed sales, operations, and business development. Cabrera is a noted expert in issues relating to sales performance management and enterprise and SaaS delivery models. Prior to founding Xactly, Cabrera was SVP of operations for Callidus Software and served as director of North American channel sales at Silicon Graphics.

About Xactly
Xactly Corporation is the market leader in on-demand sales performance management. The company’s SPM Suite of products enables sales and finance executives to design, implement, manage, audit, and optimize sales compensation management programs easily and affordably. Xactly’s solutions automate the process of aggregating data from disparate systems into a secure, hosted repository and enable companies to leverage this business data, which is the lifeblood of sales performance management. Xactly helps companies improve operational performance, optimize sales effectiveness, proactively manage risk and compliance, and maximize profits. The Xactly family of products is used by sales and finance executives, compensation analysts, sales operations, and sales professionals across a variety of industries ranging from SMBs to large enterprises. For more information go to www.xactlycorp.com.