The Advantica Story
The challenge
Advantica is a premier provider of advanced technology and systems solutions that help high performance energy and water delivery companies world-wide improve their operating performance and achieve their business vision. With origins in British Gas in the UK and in Stoner Associates in the US, Advantica has a proven track record of over 30 years experience servicing more than 550 clients in over 50 countries. The company’s 900 employees possess a blending of strong technology, software, engineering, training and testing skills and experience. Advantica’s challenge was to fully exploit their world-class expertise by significantly increasing the proportion of work acquired from outside the parent company, NationalGridTransco. To win more external work they needed to sharpen their focus, choose their target markets, identify the winning sales propositions and take them to market. As David Carew, newly appointed VP for Worldwide Sales, put it: “We have a wealth of skilled people, advanced tools and excellent facilities, our challenge is to learn how to sell these more aggressively.
Action
To help him address this challenge David chose the Strategic Sales Program. He could see that the Strategic Sales Program process would drive Advantica to a clearer packaging of their service offerings, and that the materials produced would be exactly what Advantica salespeople and partners needed to achieve peak sales performance. David wanted fast results, and the Strategic Sales Program delivered quickly and with a minimum of call on Advantica’s resources.
Results
Advantica found that the Strategic Sales Program paid-off in a number of ways. The Marketing Workshop is a key stage in the Strategic Sales Program, and Advantica found that the work done to prepare for this helped them to package their offerings into logical service groupings that are easier for customers to understand. They found that the Marketing Workshop itself was a powerful device for achieving clarity and agreement across all the Advantica stakeholders. “Having the Solutions for Sales consultant there to structure the debate, ask the difficult questions and driveout the important points was key to our success” David commented. The resulting Sales Guides have been received with acclaim by Advantica’s salesforce. The guides describe the sales opportunities for each set of services, show salespeople how to find customers that will buy, and explain how to position Advantica’s services to win. David concludes: “The salespeople love it. It enables them to understand what we have to sell and shows them how to sell it”. The bottom line - Advantica are reaching more customers and selling more successfully thanks to the Strategic Sales Program from Solutions for Sales.
“As Advantica grows its business overseas and enters new markets, the Strategic Sales Program has enabled us to refine and clarify our business propositions, and is helping Advantica’s salespeople and partners to sell our leading-edge services more successfully. The result has been an improved focus, a higher level of customer engagement and more sales."
David Carew, VP Worldwide Sales, Advantica Technology
The Strategic Sales Program is only available from Solutions for Sales Ltd.
For more information please email or call +44 (0)1702 586742.