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pdf versionGo-to-Market Strategies for Business Services
The Challenge:
Develop and package automated Alerts & Notifications solutionsfor vertical markets, generating incremental revenue and increasing market share.
Situation Assessment:
The messaging division of Premiere Global Services was losing ground competitively to newer, more agile solution providers. Premiere needed to update its Alerts & Notifications product offerings, positioning them to be more competitive with the right target audiences.
At the same time, the company wanted to fully integrate the recently acquired Xpedite communications division with the existing Premiere Conferencing brand to create a unified corporate presence.
Solutions:
The top priority for Premiere was quickly updating the product solution set to meet market needs and achieve revenue growth. To achieve this, several strategic and tactical actions were taken oven the course of two years:
Updated Product Offerings
Qualitative research was conducted to determine customers' requirements for new solutions offerings. This data was leveraged to define and prioritize product enhancements, working with the product development team to implement an 18 month product roadmap for accelerated deployment of upgraded services.
A key component of the new solution set was development of the world's first outbound speech platform for interactive alerts and notifications, giving Premiere Global Services' customers the ability to create and launch new speech applications through a simple web interface.
Positioning by Vertical Markets
To market this innovative platform, along with newly packaged solutions utilizing existing technology, the company adopted a vertical market approach, targeting financial services, retail, health care and utilities industries.
Product positioning was tailored to each target market, with industry-specific collateral, updated web content and a revised product naming architecture that reflected the value proposition for each solution.
An aggressive thought leadership campaign was used to create awareness of the new solutions, reaching out to engage industry analysts, media representatives and conference organizers. Conducted media and analyst briefings, and spoke at several industry conferences to promote the updated service offerings.
Lead Generation and Sales Support
To ensure successful revenue growth, Marketing partnered with the sales team to accelerate the sales cycle:
- Demand generation and customer acquisition programs were launched, and an in-house appointment setting team was deployed to deliver qualified appointments for the 23 outside sales representatives.
- New sales training programs and incentives were implemented, including a comprehensive "sales toolkit" with presentations, cases studies, ROI calculators and other materials to support the sales process.
- An RFP response team was created to centralize the proposal process which had not previously been formally coordinated. The quality of proposals was improved and response preparation time was reduced, increasing win rates.
Results:
This multifaceted marketing program yielded significant results, increasing market share to 17% with penetration in new markets, strategic account acquisition and solution cross selling.
- Within 4 months of launching the appointment setting program, the sales pipeline was filled with qualified leads, generating over $103K in new revenue opportunities.
- The company emerged as a thought leader in the Alerts & Notifications space. Company executives presented at 6 conferences in 6 months, securing numerous articles and media mentions, and building relationships with analysts at Yankee, Tower and Forrester.
- The company won Customer Inter@ction Solutions' "Speech Technology Excellence" award for its innovative speech notifications application.