Quantum Sales, UK business sales and marketing consultants

COMMUNICATIONS SERVICES PROVIDER
A UNIQUE SERVICE TO HELP CUSTOMERS EXPLOIT A BUYERS' MARKET

Unica - a new concept communications solutions provider

To help maximise Unica's opportunities in the marketplace

To recruit, train, jointly manage and mentor a sales team to achieve challenging sales targets and deliver against individual sales plans produced with Quantum

Fast-track to promising market share

Quantum's remuneration package features performance-related payment over the long-term

Historically, there has never been a service layer between the vendors and customers of communications services. Customers either operated under monopoly conditions, getting all their services from just the one carrier - such as BT. Or they dealt with up to five different providers, with all the administrative complications such an arrangement implies.

Diversification has led to greater choice for customers and capacity has outstretched demand, but communications remained a sellers' market - with major carriers in the driving seat.

"Unica's mission is to change this," says Noel Dunn, the company's Joint Managing Director. "Our proposition is this: we have the industry knowledge and the buying power to offer customers the greatest choice at the best prices. And customers need deal only with us. It's a new concept - and we asked Quantum to help us create the salesforce and the sales operation that could get the message across quickly and effectively."

Quantum's analysis was that communications was a 'tired' marketplace. Customers were used to buying largely on price. Similarly, the existing 'gene pool' of communications salespeople was used to selling mainly on price, rather than by selling value for money and differentiating their services from others. "And so Quantum took the view that to find high-quality salespeople we should look outside the industry," continues Noel Dunn. "This would give us a clean slate upon which to build a salesforce to go out and sell a very strongly differentiated offering."


	Noel Dunn

Quantum has undertaken to recruit, train, jointly manage and mentor these salespeople. The process is painstaking, with just nine people appointed so far out of several hundred applicants. Quantum identifies the candidates then conducts interviews, tests and assesses candidates in pre-prepared set-piece situations and sales simulation role-play exercises with Unica becoming involved only after the candidate has cleared these obstacles. "The common thread uniting all successful candidates is good, raw talent," Noel Dunn adds. "Quantum then goes on to equip them to plan and organise their activity, and sell professionally and consultatively when they are with customers."

Success is measured through the one-to-one 'Personal Sales Plans' which Quantum has developed to help deliver corporate sales targets. It is also measured through the Siebel sales automation software which Quantum helped to specify. "The process works, and with Quantum's help, we are achieving our objective: to create a customer-orientated service organisation with a strongly differentiated product. The plan now is to roll out this winning formula across Europe next year, with Quantum still managing the recruitment, productivity and quality of the Unica salesforce."