THE CLIENT
This Financial Services client, a Fortune 50 company, processes millions of transactions daily as the premium network for high-spending card members. A global services corporation, they provide innovative payment, travel and expense management solutions for individuals and businesses of all sizes.
Under new sales and marketing leadership, the client planned to reconfigure their go-to-market strategy, according to the following changes:
- Shifting their field sales personnel up-market to focus exclusively on larger, enterprise accounts while reevaluating telesales vendors, who were providing lead generation services in a highly scripted environment.
- Determining that they could no longer afford the cost of a two-step sales process (lead generation agent passing leads to field sales) in the SMB market.
- Rethinking the scripted agent approach, which was counterproductive to the client’s high-end brand and resulted in low conversion rates and not meeting forecasts for new acquired customers.
We had our work cut out for us.
THE PROGRAM
Alorica stepped in to help solve these issues. First, we increased the effectiveness of the client’s field sales force by allowing them to focus on larger, more profitable accounts while spending more time in front of prospects closing deals. Second, we created a world-class, high-performance SMB telesales channel that delivers high conversion while also appropriately positioning and protecting the brand that the client goes to great lengths to elevate. Last, we built and established a solution that unlocked the spending power of its existing high-potential business customers.
THE SOLUTION
After working with the client to refine their market segmentation, database management, and account profiling processes, Alorica developed and executed a three-tier program to address the client’s objectives. First, an appointment-setting program was launched to support hundreds of field sales representatives selling commercial card and expense management solutions into higher-end enterprise accounts. Secondly, Alorica developed a direct consultative telesales solution to help the client increase revenues within the small and mid-sized business market. As a third program, the client partnered with Alorica to design and execute an upsell, cross-sell and customer education program for small business owners. As part of the process, the partners instituted an innovative benchmarking approach that measured incremental spend lift compared against a control group of like customers for this account management program.
Dayyyyyum!
THE RESULTS
As a result of Alorica’s integrated approach, close rates on the appointments scheduled for field sales personnel increased from historical rates of 10% to 28%, resulting in hundreds of millions in sales revenue over a three-year period. Consequently, senior sales and marketing executives reverse engineered their three-year top line goals utilizing the new metrics established by Alorica’s appointment setting results.
Alorica’s integrated, consultative selling channel for the SMB market has resulted in an average of 10,000 new high-value business customers per year (annual revenue value of nearly 100 million); revenue per customer has increased by 12%, while average hours per sale has decreased by 25%. Alorica helped the client develop an innovative approach of segmenting and targeting prospects based upon value and introduced a statistically valid method for introducing new products.
Lastly, the success of these efforts led to the client asking Alorica to assume responsibility for the retention and growth portfolio of SMB customers. Through upselling and cross-selling programs, Alorica increased the annual revenue by $15M while helping the client increase Net Promoter Scores to be top in the financial services industry.
A FEW FINAL THOUGHTS
We began with a small pilot program to help the client reengineer their sales and marketing approach in 2002; today, we have been formally awarded strategic partner status and are the primary channel partner with hundreds of agents supporting SMB accounts for their commercial division within our domestic centers. For our efforts, Alorica has been recognized by the client as a direct contributor in their achievement of eight consecutive JD Power Awards.