Microsoft and Huthwaite:
New Customer-Centred Selling Focus Drives Strong
Growth for Microsoft's Mid-Market Sales Engine
- Developing customer problems leads to a 38% increase in sales productivity and a 250% growth of pipeline
- New approach focuses on customer problems and opportunities rather than Microsoft's solutions
Microsoft
Microsoft Asia Pacific's Small, Mid-Market Solutions & Partners
(SMS&P) division sells to SMB customers across the Microsoft
Software Platform, including Core Infrastructure, Collaboration
and Business Productivity and Application solutions. These
solutions enable Microsoft's customers to reduce IT costs, drive
innovation, build stronger customer relationships and develop
sustainable competitive advantage.
Facing aggressive growth targets for the current financial year,
Microsoft realised that they had to find a way for their Mid-
Market sales force to further maximise selling opportunities and
drive even greater customer value.
Sales Challenge
Microsoft realised that just following up on campaign mailers
through their Inside Sales Representatives (ISR) wasn't creating
the number or size of opportunities that would help the company
hit its targets.
John Jenkins, Inside Sales Director for Microsoft Asia Pacific's Mid-
Market customers noted that, "We had recognised some time
ago that our inside sales engine had the potential to provide us
far more growth than we were currently creating. We were seeing
that just calling off the back of a mailer had a very low chance
of success and our conversion to leads and revenue was low.
Our customers generally didn't have an immediate or pressing
need for the campaign we were promoting. We realised that we
needed to do something different".
John and his team undertook a realignment of the ISR teams
across the region with an emphasis being placed on readiness
and, in particular, soft skills training. Their focus was on moving
the telephone call to potential customers away from pitching
technology to one that helped the customer understand problems
and opportunities they might be experiencing that the Microsoft
solution could address.
Choosing an Approach
John and his team had plenty of options to choose from when
looking at moving towards a customer centred sales approach.
"We chose to go with a highly tailored SPIN® Selling solution
from Huthwaite in Asia Pacific. The reasons we did this was that
we knew the methodology was based on extensive research and
we had seen it work both on a personal and organisational level
in many companies that we were familiar with. The methodology
had a very solid certification process that has enabled us to bring
the delivery in house. The coaching and follow up components
helped to clearly differentiate the solution as far more than a oneoff
training program. Huthwaite's significant presence across the
Asia Pacific region also meant that it became just as cost effective
as employing internal resources to deploy from other parts of
Microsoft. The other thing that we have been very impressed with
is the extensive follow up and support materials that our local
sales leads are able to pick up and run with their local teams,"
says John Jenkins.
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The Results