Microsoft Live Meeting
A web conferencing company
The Challenge: After the attacks on September 11, 2001 and concerns over air travel safety, Live Meeting found itself flooded with prospect calls. They needed to find an efficient way to follow up and accurately forecast sales.
The Solution: Hire Phone Works to build a state-of-the-art process to determine which leads were qualified, and convert those to sales. After a thorough evaluation of the client’s strengths and areas for improvement, Phone Works realigned the strategy and implemented three distinct groups with specialized functions and separate goals: Lead Development, Telesales, and Account Management. Lead Development was chartered with qualifying incoming Web inquiries; Telesales followed up on qualified leads and closed sales in all but named accounts, which were covered by Field Sales. The Account Management team worked with existing customers. For each group, Phone Works hired staff, developed training and compensation plans, developed sales productivity tools and key performance indicators, and implemented automation to track prospects and customers. During the 8-month project, we also actively managed all three groups.
The Result
- Within two quarters, customer retention increased by 123%
- Average order size for new sales nearly doubled
- Able to accurately forecast revenue
