CASE STUDY: Trustwave
POWERING THE WORLD’S SELLERS
“SAVO was a big win for us as a growing
midmarket company. It helped us formalize
our sales enablement strategy and capture
metrics surrounding our success.”
- Roy Lamond, Sr. Director, Learning & Collaboration
TRUSTWAVE
Headquarters: Chicago, IL, USA
SITUATION
Making the most of your sales team, whatever its size
Small and mid-sized sales organizations face special challenges. They need to
maximize the resources they have, quickly ramp new sellers, and get their business
processes and documentation in order. Trustwave’s Roy Lamond understands that
sales enablement is critically relevant for a growing company – but not easy to
tackle alone.
“Every organization understands that it has to enable its sellers,” he says. “But to
what extent do you organize it? How do you readily make available the tools that
sellers need to be successful? How do you plan the release of information? How
do you sustain it? Savo helped us improve our sales enablement.”
SOLUTION
Empower sales and channel partners with a consistent
source of knowledge
Employees: 1,000
With offices throughout Africa, Asia,
Australia, Europe, North America and
South America, Trustwave is a leading
provider of cloud-based compliance
and information security solutions.
Key initiatives met with SAVO:
• Formalize the sales enablement
strategy and capture metrics to
evaluate success
• Disseminate accurate and current
information to the sales force
• Streamline creation of contracts and
SOWs
• Establish a platform for communicating with channel partners
Trustwave launched SAVO for its own sales force – a geographically-dispersed
group that has grown dramatically. Three months later, Trustwave launched a SAVO site for hundreds of its channel partners.
“SAVO introduced concepts that resonated with us,” Lamond says,
• “One was the ‘single source of truth’ for content management. Previously, we had multiple sites where marketing and product
managers posted information for the sales force. “
• “Another concept was standardizing our customer contracts and statements of work. We wanted SAVO to make this process
faster and easier for our sales reps while giving us better managerial control.”
RESULT
“SAVO helped us understand the potential of sales enablement.”
“We achieved two major goals,” says Lamond. “Improving the way we create and deliver statements of work to our customers, and
improving the way we disseminate information and marketing literature to our sales force. But interestingly, the process of working
with SAVO yielded many benefits as well. As we prepared for launch, it forced us to pay attention to issues related to document
management and information dissemination. I would say to other midmarket companies: you have grown and gotten to where you
are, but you haven’t necessarily put in place all of the rigorous procedures you need to be efficient. SAVO can help guide you
through that process, which is very beneficial for your business.”
“SAVO reporting gives you insight into seller
readiness/preparedness”
SAVO metrics give management a clear view of user activity and resource usage.
This helps sales leaders manage their departments and it helps other functional
areas in the company, including marketing, to better align their efforts to
support sales. “The SAVO reports are valuable and we rely on them for data
that previously had not been available to us,” Lamond says. “Sales managers
can use the information to coach and mentor their sellers. For the marketing
team, which spends a lot of time building collateral, SAVO reporting is helpful for
understanding which assets get used – and which assets are a waste of time – so
they can focus on producing useful collateral.”
Activity reporting for individual users has given Trustwave useful insights into
what makes a seller successful. “There is a high correlation between seller
success and the amount of activity they show in SAVO and in our training system,”
says Lamond. “I wouldn’t argue that high usage is necessarily a predictor of
success, but I can show that the sellers who consistently make their numbers are
the ones who do the most searching in SAVO, complete their training courses,
and log in on both systems regularly.”
“There is a high
correlation between
seller success and the
amount of activity they
show in SAVO and in
our training system.”
- Roy Lamond, Sr. Director, Learning
& Collaboration
Tribal knowledge and customizable content
“Before implementing SAVO, we had a lot of sites internally where different parts
of the organization deposited information,” says Lamond. “We acquired
different companies and they all had their own habits for communicating with
sales. We have been able to change the culture of the organization so that now
SAVO is the one place where everyone deposits meaningful knowledge and
where people go to find it.”
Content tools allow sellers to pull templates and other information from the
SAVO knowledge base and turn them into polished, professional documents and
presentations that are customized to fit the particular deal and customer. “The
sellers who were here prior to SAVO will tell you they save time generating
statements of work on SAVO. One of the lessons we’re learning is that, because
of our ever-changing business, we must keep working to maintain current
templates. One way we’re improving that process is to integrate SAVO with our
CRM tool, so we can more easily pull in current information about the customer
opportunity.”
Engaging the partner channel
Over the last few years, Trustwave has acquired several companies. The next
step is to strengthen ties with the channel partners who came with those
acquisitions. Lamond says, “To continue to grow and realize our potential, we
know it’s going to take a mature and well-nourished channel. Our SAVO partner
site will play an important role in this initiative.”
Interacting with other SAVO customers is invaluable
“My interaction with the folks at SAVO has always been good,” says Lamond.
“The one thing I probably appreciate most is the annual summit conference. It
helps me to plan my year and decide what I want to focus on. I’ve learned a lot
from interacting with other SAVO customers, hearing about their mistakes and
successes.”
For more information about SAVO sales
enablement solutions and how they can
help companies of any size, please visit
us at www.savogroup.com
or call 312-506-1700 x3
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Trademark Office. All other product or service names are the property of
their respective owners. © SAVO Group, Inc. 2011. All rights reserved.