Sales Org Update
By David Hendrix, Vice President of Sales
As the CoolSys sales organization entered 2019, it was time to execute a major transformation developed throughout 2018 to help our team members and the business progress towards a more efficient operating model and customer experience. I joined the organization on December 31. From my perspective, the coolest thing was the culture of the team and the organization and their willingness and desire to do whatever it takes to succeed and for our customers to be delighted with our service. Our theme is efficiency and enablement, and a few of the focus areas are listed below:
- Creation of Sales Operations Team: This team, led by Lisa Baldewin, was created to assist the entire sales team on sales enablement (salesforece.com, Reporting, Development), RFPs, RFIs, pricing management and proposal creation. One of the key outcomes of our sales transformation was to remove administrative duties, which will allow the sales team to spend more time in front of our customers and prospects.
- Creation of Commercial Operations Team: Led by Alex Fernandez, this team manages the administration of our most important customers and allows our Account Managers to spend their time on creating and managing relationships with their key levels of influences.
- Investment in Sales Tools: We recently armed our sales team with iPads and purchased a tool, ShowPad (showpad.com), to enable them with a more efficient way to share the uniqueness of CoolSys. This tool allows our team to create presentations with preexisting content on the fly, present, and share it with their customers or prospects. The tool also allows us to understand what content is working and how customers are responding to it, so we can make additional investments to help the sales team be more successful and for us to grow.
- Investment in Training and Development: The sales leaders have attended a couple of different workshops facilitated by Miller Heiman, on sales methodology, techniques, and a sales framework. These new ideas, ways of thinking, and techniques are being utilized and coached during our monthly training meetings and while in the field with our sales colleagues.
This year is going to be a fun and challenging one for all of us. We are off to a great start and know that with a focus on our transformation and our investments, we have the opportunity to truly take the market by storm. Our Business Development team is finding new enterprise and strategic accounts and our Account Managers are focused on growing their accounts. We are all focused on continuing to build upon this great culture and are on the road to help the organization reach 10 percent profitable organic growth.