Do you have an Executive Sponsor Program for Your Largest Customers/Prospects?

How can you differentiate your organization as the technology industry matures, competition becomes fiercer, and technology buyers' budgets remain under pressure? One way is to increase the level of service and attention provided to your customers and best prospects, increasing the attention and value that they receive from your company. Connecting your best customers and largest prospects to your executive staff through an executive sponsor program is one method that can help you achieve these goals and better equip your sales reps to be more productive.

IDC recently conducted interviews with five hardware, software, and IT service companies with revenues ranging from $4 billion to $30+ billion that have an active executive sponsor program. Here are a few highlights from our research:

• Matching the right executive with the right customer is a critical first step in executing a successful executive sponsor program. Above all else, proper "fit" between the executive and external account should be the most important requirement when selecting and matching executives.
• Targeting only the largest revenue clients and potential revenue prospects for the executive sponsor program will enable you to optimize resources.
• Involving the account managers throughout the entire process, from account selection to gathering executive feedback, will enable them to have a sense of ownership to the program, which is a must for this program to succeed.
• Defining roles and responsibilities of both participating executives and account managers is a start. Companies should take this exercise a step further by aligning and communicating responsibilities to one another.
• Training, coaching, and guiding executives should be at the forefront of the program. Moreover, organizations should consider having veteran executives of the program train the rookie executives who have recently been selected to participate.
• Establishing metrics and targets to gauge the impact of the program should be a key initiative. Examples include customer satisfaction and related feedback, client retention, revenue growth, share of wallet, and account team feedback.
• Rewarding executives for a job well done will go a long way. Even something as simple as public recognition during a board meeting, company meeting, or QBR will be appreciated by executives involved.

(IDC Sales Advisory Service clients should reference IDC Doc. #225024 for additional information regarding developing and deploying an executive sponsor program.)

Establishing and maintaining a successful executive sponsor program can provide technology vendors with one of the missing links that is needed to build deeper executive relationships with priority customers and prospects. Companies that have an executive sponsor program in place and are executing it effectively will have a clear competitive advantage in the market as competition continues to increase and customers demand more from their vendors.

Does your company have a well deployed executive sponsor program? If so, how is it impacting your sales organization?
[blog post by Irina Zvagelsky]

Are You a Technology Sales Leader?....or a Laggard?

New for 2010, IDC has developed the Sales Performance Matrix to take an objective and quantitative approach to stratifying sales leaders and laggards. This matrix draws a direct correlation between a company’s sales operational efficiency and its effectiveness in execution in the marketplace. Our objective is to assess the key sales management priorities and actions taken that have led to excellence in results. The basis for this analsyis is IDC's annual Sales Productivity Benchmarks study coupled with insight from best practices studies and other research conducted by IDC's Sales Advisory Service. (note that the below figure represents larger organizations, with 70% of companies having $500M+ in revenue and an average revenue of ~$5B)

Measurement of a sales organization's efficiency is composed of four key attributes: Sales Investment; Sales Staff Efficiency; Maturity across IDC's Sales Productivity Levers; and Sales Infrastructure. Each attribute is composed of several key performance indicators that are derived through IDC Sales Advisory Service's research efforts, and provide indicators as to the level of maturity of the respective productivity attributes.

This Sales Performance Matrix certainly provides a great industry-level view of the maturity of companies' sales organizations as well as insight into best-in-class companies; however, the real value comes when we look at individual companies' sales productivity scorecards to assess their performance and drive recommendations for improvement. IDC's Sales Productivity Scorecards include analysis of all key performance indicators for each of the above-mentioned productivity attributes. For example, the below figure provides an industry-wide assessment of the gaps across just one of these attributes, IDC's sales productivity levers:

Do these industry challenges sound familiar? How effective has your organization been at deploying the above-mentioned strategies in response to some of these challenges? Please comment below to join the conversation or contact me at mgerard@idc.com. Sales Advisory Service clients can access additional frameworks, quantitative data and best practices recommendations and case studies to address their greatest sales challenges at www.idc.com/salesadvisory.

Please do contact me if you'd like to learn more about how we can leverage these frameworks and results from our recent Sales Productivity Benchmarks study for your organization.