IBM Software Group Central&Eastern Europe

In‭ ‬1997‭ ‬IBM formed IBM Software Group‭ ‬-‭ ‬a separate world-wide business unit that focused on building a solid market share in enterprise software market to ensure future leading position of IBM in all of IT industry.‭ ‬Traditional approach to selling‭ ‬-‭ ‬product based selling that IBM used to sell standard products was not appropriate for new market situation.‭ ‬This is why IBM Software Group chose Solution Selling Process methodology as a common sales approach.‭

<h2> Business Challenge

Deployment of this high-performance,‭ ‬buyer centric sales approach became the most critical element in the process of building this new organization.‭ ‬In Central Europe this organization was still to be built.‭ ‬With cultural specifics of each country this combined challenge was so intense that sales activities got out of control,‭ ‬results were unpredictable and the whole mission in the region was in danger.

Reasons

• The local teams were formed mostly of new hires without serious B2B sales experience,
• the existing,‭ ‬more experienced members of local teams were resisting to new approaches,
• experienced leaders from Vienna HQ could not cover all important sales situations in the countries.

<h2> Capabilities needed and Solution
The regional management team needed a way to:

• deploy theoretical sales concept into every day selling in a form of easy to use tools,
• make sure the process was executed consistently producing verifiable outcomes,
• forecast,‭ ‬monitor and analyze the sales activities and results using an information system suited to the process.
• lead the project by people that were used to cultural differences of different countries

Members of the core Produs team in Atol were then a part of the leadership team that built and deployed the sales management system that provided these capabilities.

Result

• All sales professionals followed a common sales process,‭ ‬used same set of tools and used "a common language".
• Newly hired team members were brought up to speed much quicker.
• Regional leaders were able to see reliable information about sales pipeline,‭ ‬status of all and each opportunity.
• Forecasts were regularly prepared,‭ ‬discussed and thus more reliable.