Services: Contact Center – Sales

Industry: B2B, Technology

01 | Problem

Grass Valley, the world’s second largest manufacturer of high-end broadcasting equipment, was tasked with driving $8 million in annual service sales, while lowering its overall costs for selling service contracts and contract renewals. It was important for Grass Valley to be the leading provider in North, Central and South America, but its in-house team was costly; therefore, the company began searching for a solution.

02 | Solution

With 30 years of experience and a validated set of best practices, Dialog Direct goes beyond traditional inside sales services to improve businesses’ relationships with their customers and help drive sales.

The provider recognized Grass Valley’s equipment is absolutely mission critical for clients, such as broadcast stations, school television stations, sports television, multi-broadcasting stations, public broadcasting stations and more. Dialog Direct’s objective was to ensure all Grass Valley products were covered and protected through current service agreements. If Grass Valley fails to sell the service agreement, customers are at risk of lost revenue if, for instance, their Grass Valley television camera malfunctions and they do not have service to repair it. Without the service agreements Dialog Direct sells on behalf of Grass Valley, television productions do not happen and revenue is lost.

Together, Grass Valley and Dialog Direct collaborated on lead generation, customer care, technical support and value-added profit centers, while together they created a thorough training program to provide sales representatives the necessary technical background to match their technical solution sales skills.

Dialog Direct immediately recruited two sales professionals with extensive experience selling technical solutions. Both sales professionals were trained using Dialog Direct’s proprietary sales process, sales qualification tool and sales forecasting modules, as well as Grass Valley’s internal quoting tools.

Next, Dialog Direct’s sales representatives began renewing expired and expiring contracts, sought out new business and upsold each contract. Representatives look at every product each customer has, reviews whether or not it is under contract or serviceable, and ensures those that are serviceable have a service agreement. “In regard to sales output, we can’t ask for more!,” said Grass Valley’s Robert Warner, Sales Director, Global Services. In addition, as Dialog Direct took on more of the selling responsibility, Grass Valley’s executives were able to work on larger and more strategic opportunities, further improving operations.

“Yesterday’s call centers have undergone a transformation,” said Doug Kearney, Chief Executive Officer, Dialog Direct. “They are no longer static answering services, but now value-added profit centers that build long-term enterprise value and lifelong customer relationships. To be successful, businesses must use the tools and resources available to manage every single contact in each stage of the customer cycle, from pre-sales to technical support.”

03 | Results

Grass Valley’s sales process requires multiple technical calls and emails. Dialog Direct cut the company’s operational costs in half. In addition, average monthly sales have reached more than $522,000 – 124 percent quota over the history of the project – and continues to increase. Last month, Dialog Direct closed more than $749,000 in sales with a single deal worth more than $153,000 – something that cannot be accomplished through a traditional call center.

“The overall organization of the program, launch and professionalism came together very well. We are pleased with the results!” said Warner.

Since the initial implementation, Grass Valley’s confidence in Dialog Direct has continued to increase, adding more responsibility to sell more. Recently, Grass Valley gave Dialog Direct access to its internal systems, including its internal database of products.