Appendix   

Real-World Examples

Now that you’ve learned the theory, studied the frameworks, and mastered the skills you need to deliver your expansion message, you’re probably wondering how these elements all come together in a real-world scenario. “Hmph!” we hear you grumble. “Might be nice to see what all this stuff looks like in the light of day.”

Happy to oblige!

In the pages that follow, you’ll see examples of two complete stories—messages developed within the applicable frameworks, together with supporting visuals, designed to be delivered in live meetings with existing customers.^*

The first comes from our own archive (yes, we subscribe wholeheartedly to the “put your money where your mouth is” theory of business). The second is a message developed in partnership with a client for its sellers to deliver to their own customers.

CORPORATE VISIONS WHY STAY (RENEWAL) MESSAGE FOR ACME CORPORATION

When Acme Corp., one of our longtime clients, was nearing the end of its contract term, we decided the best way to convince the company that our new (at the time) Why Stay message framework was valid was to use it to develop and deliver the renewal message.

And in case you’re wondering, the client did, in fact, renew the contract.

Here’s the story that won the renewal, and the corresponding simple, concrete visual to support that story. Review the story and the visual—then use the Why Stay planner to practice your own renewal message.

Three years ago, you were focused on improving sales rep productivity. Whether that’s deal size or velocity or win rates, the research showed that you could get the most traction toward that goal by improving the customer conversation.

But that research was essentially descriptive. You also needed the “how”—tactical ways to apply the theory to the Acme Corp. way of selling. How do you differentiate your solutions? How do you elevate sales conversations to the executive level? And how do you saturate the field in this approach?

You turned to us because only with Corporate Visions can you tie the research to specific real-world applications in marketing, selling, and learning. And it’s been working.

In fact, these numbers—600, 80, and 8—tell a story about your progress.

•   In a third-party study, 600 of your reps reported on one deal.

•   From that sample alone, $80 million in revenue was directly influenced by the new model that you’ve put into place.

•   Just last quarter, you saw 8 percent year-over-year revenue growth.

Now you know how difficult it is for Sales Ops to prove that those results are tied directly to the new messaging and skills you’re rolling out. But you’ve also been hearing stories from the field about their successes.

•   One sales leader said that by being more intentional and deliberate about applying these conversation skills, last year was his team’s best year ever.

•   A seller in another division said that role-playing executive feedback helped him close a deal just days later.

•   And another said that these conversations created, quote, “such awe” that the prospect immediately signed the deal.

It’s all driven by the street-level skills that you’ve developed with Corporate Visions.

But it hasn’t been easy to get to this point. You debated with multiple stakeholders, getting consensus over nearly five months of meetings. Then you worked even harder to weave Corporate Visions’ work into the Acme Corp way of selling.

•   You chose to align our IP with each step of your process.

•   You created unlimited access to it in all the tools your reps use every day.

•   You embedded the training into your onboarding.

All that paid off, because now you’ve truly saturated all your sellers in the same IP. That’s what creates the level of change that makes a difference in your performance.

Still, the truth is that you’re not all the way there. We know you’ve been concerned about the commitment from your sales leaders. You need those leaders to reinforce, to coach, to hold reps accountable in the field.

Because right now, the stakes are high. It’s well known that you’ve been pressured by vocal stakeholders about the organization’s direction. And there’s been a recent executive-level mandate to stay the course.

When you think about it, stepping away from your current approach means dialing back this saturation. It means putting a hurdle in between your sellers and the messages and skills you want them to use—those that have already demonstrated the ability to win.

Think of this as a scarcity model. When you limit access to the IP, the signal loses some of its impact. It degrades when it has to travel farther.

•   That’s partly because there’s friction involved. Say you’ve got a big client meeting in a month, and it would be a great time to give your team some training. But you have to get a PO. You have to limit how many sellers can attend so that it fits in your budget. Maybe you figure it might be easier to do something else instead—or nothing at all.

•   You also break that alignment between marketing and sales. Without full access, the IP won’t be embedded in your systems such as Salesforce. You lose the built-in reporting and tracking in your LMS. You’re no longer putting your messages in context.

•   Plus, you worked with us as a collaboration partner to innovate this model. The scarcity approach feels more frugal, but you’d actually be paying significantly more money per engagement without it. That’s especially true when you consider that your certified facilitators would no longer be licensed to deliver training.

When you make the IP scarce, your productivity will by definition take a slide. As you know, with the pressure you’re facing, you simply can’t afford that right now.

Although your sellers have learned a lot in the past three years, that doesn’t mean it’s time to retreat to a scarcity model. Instead, you need to drive this saturation even further into the field. The good news is that this requires virtually no change on your part. All you have to do is stick with what you’ve had budgeted all these years.

When you do, you’ll have new ways to influence rep productivity:

•   First, you’ll help your enablement team create even more powerful conversations around the key decisions buyers make during their relationship with you. We’ve done new research with surprising results that informs our continued IP development.

•   Second, you’ll help your sales leaders model and coach the IP. Leaders excel when they can see written feedback of how their people were coached after exhibiting their skills. So you’ll make coaching more prescriptive and consistent by showing your managers feedback from our experts, and then showing them how to follow the same rubric in their own coaching.

•   And third, you’ll have more opportunities to tie in inline, virtual microlearning. You’ve used us to deliver many events virtually. Now you’ll take the next step to make virtual training even more effective by distilling content to the most granular level, delivering it repeatedly with skills practice, and embedding it into the systems your reps already use.

FINANCIAL SERVICES WHY EVOLVE MESSAGE

Another client, a firm that provides technology solutions and processing services to large banks, turned to us for help transitioning existing customers away from its on-premise software products to a full outsourcing arrangement. This message was tricky, because the client was also the provider of the on-premise software! And even though the new arrangement would be much more profitable for our client, its sellers were nervous about starting that conversation. This story supported the sellers’ situational fluency by giving them the framework of the message but also the space and coaching to insert client-specific detail and “reaction” questions to truly personalize the interaction.

Here’s the story they developed, and the corresponding visual.

The entire financial services industry has been intensely focused on increasing efficiency to manage costs and relieve margin pressure. And working with us, you’ve made tremendous progress toward making your back office more efficient.

[Presenter: Replace the following ideas with customer-specific successes, ideally with quantifiable proof, such as efficiency gains, productivity improvements, or cost reductions.]

•   You’ve worked with us to automate critical processes and workflows such as core processing and item processing.

•   Now it’s easier and faster to run your bank and comply with evolving regulations.

Yet despite these gains, many of your peers are questioning whether processing speed and back-office efficiency are enough to remain as lean as you need to be . . . and keep and grow your customer base. They’re beginning to recognize that innovation beyond the back office is the only path forward.

[Presenter: Ask a reaction question, such as “How has your back office changed in the last XX years since you started working with us?”]

That’s because pressure on both these fronts for banks like yours has amped up. For one thing, mergers and acquisitions are becoming the norm. And if you’re adding new banks every year or 18 months, that rapid growth can strain your technology infrastructure. It’s a scramble to get everyone on the same systems and ramp up your capacity—not to mention keep everything secure and compliant.

Meanwhile, your competition is changing. When you first started working with us, you were worried about other financial institutions competing on roughly the same criteria. And you’ve done a good job holding them at bay.

But now you also need to fend off new players—technology start-ups that didn’t even originate in financial services but have flexible new technology that customers love. Meanwhile, savvy financial institutions that were once traditional competitors are catching onto this and launching their own products and services to take on the fintechs. So now you’re getting squeezed from all three directions.

[Presenter: Ask a reaction question, such as “What changes are you seeing from a competitive perspective? How have your bank’s M&A activities affected your infrastructure and capacity?”]

But while innovation is the answer, it’s tough to implement new ideas given all the effort and expense it takes just to support your key processing systems.

Plus, innovation is fraught in financial services. Banks have to navigate layer upon layer of regulations and compliance concerns that ordinary companies don’t. Most banks are torn between being open enough to give your customers a good experience, yet controlled enough that you don’t risk breaches or damage to your margin or reputation.

Containing these risks pits you against your shareholders’ and business owners’ expectations for top-line growth. If growth is hindered or stalls, it won’t matter how efficient your core and item processing have become. Not only will you fail to produce the gains you sought, but your ability to deliver what customers need could lag far enough behind competitors that you risk losing relevance and market share.

These dynamics are causing banks like yours to rethink their strategy. All the work you’ve done around back-office efficiency is more necessary than ever . . . but so is running your business in a way that continually brings new value to customers.

You’ve been able to do both until now because you’ve been using our in-house solutions to keep things manageable in the back office. But the changing market and competition and customer demands are now hitting at such a pace that splitting your focus will start holding you back. The key is to refocus all your resources on their original mission: the business of banking. That means figuring out what customers need next from a financial and banking perspective—while keeping things running behind the scenes.

And that’s why many of our long-time in-house clients are migrating to our new outsourcing center.

By outsourcing your resource-intensive functions like core processing and item processing, you can get your people back to banking. You’ll stay on top of emerging risks without devoting yourself 24/7 to security and compliance. And you’ll bypass the back-end operational complexity that slows down innovation. In doing so, you’ll open yourself up to big new opportunities to develop customer-focused offerings.

Ultimately, you’ll address risk, complexity, and speed all at once when you outsource processing functions with strategic growth in mind. In fact, according to our “Annual Outsourcing Report,” banks that have transformed their businesses in this way are experiencing twice as much growth as their peers.

And that’s what you’re going to hear about next . . .

^* To protect our clients’ privacy, we’ve removed identifying details and renamed each company “Acme Corporation.”