Portera Systems/Exigen

Define Effective Sales Cycle

Portera Systems—a leading provider of web-based services for the global professional services sector—was developing its sales strategy. A top priority was to provide qualified leads to its sales force. Kevin McDonald, Portera’s former Vice President of Marketing, had heard Inside Sales could work, but how could he be sure it would work for Portera?

Sales Development Pilot Program

Phone Works was called in to conduct a Sales Development Pilot to determine if inside sales techniques could be effective for Portera before investing significant company resources for this purpose. According to McDonald, “Phone Works’ reputation and exceptional references for helping companies build innovative sales programs was very important to us.” During the Pilot, Phone Works provided an experienced team to implement a calling campaign. Portera’s sales value proposition was tested and perfected for optimum results; target markets were tested and confirmed; and calling scripts were developed and tested. Sales Development processes were established with measurements of success defined. The results were outstanding: the number of demonstrations and sales appointments set during the Pilot exceeded expectations by 200%.

Winning Results

The Pilot results confirmed that Inside Sales would be a critical component of Portera’s sales model. With Phone Works’ help, Portera went on to implement a fully functioning Sales Development team. McDonald couldn’t be more satisfied with the results: more than 100 sales appointments were set with qualified prospects within the second month of the group’s operation. A year later the team consisted of 10 people and was still generating over 100 appointments per month. The team was so successful that all marketing lead generation activities were discontinued.