Success Story:
VMware Builds a Prospecting Culture

Partner Profile

VMware, the global leader in virtualization and cloud infrastructure, delivers customer-proven solutions that significantly reduce IT complexity and enable more flexible, agile service delivery. VMware accelerates an organization’s transition to cloud computing, while preserving existing IT investments and enabling more efficient, agile service delivery without compromising control. With more than 190,000 customers and 25,000 partners, VMware helps organizations of all sizes lower costs, preserve freedom of choice and energize business through IT while saving energy—financial, human and the Earth’s.

 

Building On A Legacy Of Success

“We have a great relationship with Baker Communications going back several years, “ said Mike Clayville, Vice President for North American Sales at VMware. “Back in 2007-2008 we partnered with Baker and our regional partners in Asia in our first server refresh play. It was based on Baker’s unique Coaching in the Cloud Power! Play methodology, which integrates sales, marketing, training, measurement and CRM adoption activities into one highly targeted and directed sales play. The play ran in Asia, and it produced fantastic results.”

To be more specific, the play resulted in almost $40 million dollars in net new business for VMware and its partners, with an ROI substantially higher than 20 X 1:

“We have continued to work closely with Baker ever since,” Clayville continued. “We believe in the Baker strategy because it is a systematic, repeatable, manageable, measureable method of prospecting,” said Clayville. “Prospecting and messaging activities are consistent across our large sales community, and institutionalized while integrating the rest of the organization around this crucial methodology.”

Presentations from Dreamforce

Igniting Growth

Baker Communications’ Coaching in the Cloud Power! Plays integrate new prospecting skills with highly focused marketing and demand generation programs that deliver 20X1 ROI or more. The plays align the interests, goals and objectives of both sales and marketing to drive superior results. Baker plays generate sales pipeline and drive sales impacting both current and “out” quarters. The activities of marketing, sales and training co-occur in a highly coordinated, collaborative effort to execute a revenue generation strategy from start to finish. Power! Plays are staged and delivered 100% in the cloud leveraging weekly 60 minute burst sessions.

A Hint Of Things To Come

Building on the success of the Power! Plays in Asia, VMware worked with Baker to create and deploy a new PlayBook, the Customer Reactivation Power! Play. This play, was created very specifically to re-activate customers that had stopped purchasing from VMware. The play was executed in late summer 2009 and generated $3,159,915 in net new pipeline.

Then, in the spring of 2010, VMware decided to test the Server Refresh Power! Play in Europe. Working with Baker Communications’ Certified Coaching in the Cloud Partner Mentor Group, a team of 12 of inside sales representatives in Cork, Ireland ran the Server Refresh Power! Play.

Over the course of the play, the team uncovered 156 new opportunities representing in $4.1 million in net new pipeline. To date they have already closed 51 new deals at a total value of $1,024,963.

Launching A Global Initiative

”The opportunity to partner with VMware and salesforce.com, two of the world’s leading innovators, has been a privilege for us,” stated Baker Communications President and CEO Walter Rogers.

“Some organizations may be shying away from the current economic uncertainty, but this economy is creating fantastic opportunities for us and our partners in the channel,” explained Clayville. “Not only is this the perfect time for us to build a uniform corporate wide prospecting culture buy, it is actually urgent for us to do so right now.”

However, to ramp up on such a large scale would require the sales force to significantly sharpen their skills and shift their focus. Clayville and other VMware executives knew that building a prospecting culture across the organization and driving salesforce.com adoption would be the key to their success.

“Based on the history of results, we knew we had the right strategy and the right partner in Baker Communications for this global initiative,” said Yvonne Wassenaar, Vice President of Global Sales Transformation. “Rather than running plays as one-off events in each region, we are leveraging Coaching in the Cloud Power! Plays to build a global prospecting culture and transform how our sales force identifies net-new opportunities for our expanding portfolio of products and services.”

Inside and Field Sales in the Americas are working on a Tier 1 virtualization play. The first plays in Phase 1 have completed phase 1, and the results once again ran true to form. These Plays, ran in the US, have yielded:

Phases 2 through 4 are scheduled to run throughout 2011.

Gateway To Success

“The Baker play process lets us know how well we have targeted, made contact, created meaningful dialogue and created pipeline; all of these matter,” said Clayville. “It also provides weekly visibility into the specific success and obstacles faced by each play, allowing us to adjust on the fly to increased sales throughput. This process succeeds at institutionalizing the just-in-time needs and practices of sales training, resulting in an average connect ratio of 25%, conversion ratio of 65%, and 20 to 1 or better return on investment. There is simply nothing else like it for refocusing the entire team on prospecting, uncovering net new opportunities, boosting CRM adoption and driving revenue.”

About Baker Communications

Baker Communications is one of the fastest growing Performance Enablement companies in the world, delivering innovative products and services that ignite productivity in eight core business areas, including Sales, Marketing, CRM, Negotiations, Presentations, Management, Customer Service, and Time Management. Over 1,000 corporations per year, including 50% of the Fortune 500, leverage Baker Communications to improve the performance of their business critical functions. Our employees and certified partners are distributed across the Americas, EMEA, Russia and Asia, enabling us to deliver value in multiple geographies, languages and cultures. Baker Communications’ Coaching in the Cloud™ ignites individual, team and organizational growth delivered completely in the cloud for average ROI of more than 20:1. We have been recognized by Trainingindustry.com as one of the world’s “Top 10 Sales Force Automation Training Companies” and “Top 20 Sales Methodology Companies.” Baker CEO Walter Rogers can be heard every Wednesday morning on CBS Radio as an anchor co-host discussing Sales and Service Excellence.