High-Performance Telesales for Enterprise Technology

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>> Gerhard Gschwandtner: Hi, my name is Gerhard Gschwandtner, and welcome to Selling Power TV. Today we have the pleasure of meeting with Mari Anne Vanella-Wright. She's the founder and CEO of the Vanella Group. Welcome, Mari Anne.

>> Mari Anne Vanella-Wright: Thanks, thanks for having me here.

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Gschwandtner: So you are really a specialist in lead generation. That's very much needed today in this economy. How do you work with clients?

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Vanella-Wright: Well we, we provide a high-touch, a high-quality telesales solution for enterprise technology companies. And it, it's a really unique model in that it's really focused on identifying active sales cycles. So it's not the traditional lead generation that's more activity-based, where it's based on appointments or conference calls or having access to prospects but not with any real buy cycle attached to it.

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Gschwandtner: So what is the critical difference here?

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Vanella-Wright: So there, there's a number of companies that market in the teleservices space, and the difference about this program is it's based on identifying active sales cycles.

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Gschwandtner: What is an active sales cycle? What does it look like?

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Vanella-Wright: So companies that are, they have a project being defined, they are going to make a purchase within a certain amount of time, and they're willing to talk with you.

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Gschwandtner: So your service is not based on quantity; it's based on quality?

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Vanella-Wright: Right.

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Gschwandtner: And by quality we mean opportunity, right?

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Vanella-Wright: Right.

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Gschwandtner: Okay.

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Vanella-Wright: Right. So it's access to prospects, but also access with opportunities. So not just a call or an appointment.

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Gschwandtner: Right. Can you give us some examples of what companies you have worked with and, and how does it work?

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Vanella-Wright: Sure. My clients include SAP, Hitachi, Sun, Borland, Guidewire Software, and basically what we do for them is we identify active sales cycles in net new accounts for them.

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Gschwandtner: So if I'm, let's say, a software manufacturer and say, Mari Anne, we have a new solution in the marketplace, and we need you to identify about fifty top target accounts for me. You can do that.

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Vanella-Wright: Mm-hmm, yeah, absolutely.

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Gschwandtner: And you set appointments for me.

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Vanella-Wright: Well, what we do is we set engagements for you.

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Gschwandtner: Right.

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Vanella-Wright: So again we're not activity based, but we identify sales intelligence and then agreement that the prospect gives us to engage with you.

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Gschwandtner: So can you guarantee for me the number of opportunities you're going to generate for me?

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Vanella-Wright: Yeah, absolutely. That's part of the program.

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Gschwandtner: How do you do that?

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Vanella-Wright: Well, it's, it's really part of a very defined process that we use. And so a number of years back I, I trademarked responsive account development which is the formula that I apply to the programs. And it identifies sales intelligence and active opportunities and, and immediate access to requirements and initiatives inside of companies. And it works every single time.

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Gschwandtner: So Mari Anne, we aren't revealing your trade secrets. How do you get so successful with that? How do you deliver this on a predictable basis?

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Vanella-Wright: Well, I'll, I'll give you some background on the development of the solution because my, my background is in high-tech sales management. And yeah, there's been a number of times when I've brought in telemarketing vendors, and I wanted to use them for projects that I had going. And it was always so hard to get to the answer of the question of, "What am I going to get?" So one vendor I worked with, they came in, and they presented for an hour about the application that their callers use. And I could care less about that at the time. I really wanted to know how many leads am I going to get? I have this many reps. I need this many leads to build this much pipeline to get this much revenue. So it, it was really clear what I needed, so I designed the program so that a client can back into it knowing I'm going to get this many opportunities. And they can plan against it, so they can see how to scale it, so they can meet the revenue objectives.

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Gschwandtner: That makes a lot of sense, and I'm assuming that one client is going to refer to the next.

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Vanella-Wright: Oh, absolutely. And you can look at my client base now, and I get a lot of referrals. A lot of referrals. And in fact I have some clients that have been running this program for seven years.

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Gschwandtner: How cost-effective is it? What's the ROI?

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Vanella-Wright: Oh, it's extremely cost-effective. If you look at the, the quality of the opportunities that you're getting, I mean, you're engaging at a much more advanced stage of the sales cycle. You already know what the requirement is. You already know the stage it's at. You already know the timing. You know, that, it speaks for itself.

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Gschwandtner: We're going to continue our conversation with Mari Anne tomorrow when we talk about her new book, "The 42 Rules of, of Cold-Calling Executives."

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==== Transcribed by Automatic Sync Technologies ====