Opportunity
Venyu
is a leading national service provider in On-Line Backup and Recovery (OBR). While successful in the ultra-competitive OBR
space, Venyu felt it could do even better.
With a Business Grade/Disaster Recovery Grade capability as strong as
anyone in the industry, Venyu was facing the pricing pressures of a competitive
market in a down economy. Venyu needed to better stress its competitive
differentiation.
Challenge
“We know our service offer is very strong – as
good, or better, than anyone in the industry”, says Alex Vispoli, Venyu’s
Director of Sales, “but we didn’t have the competitive insight to articulate that
difference to specific prospects in competitive sales cycles”. Venyu engaged Transformation Strategies to
provide a competitive analysis to help Venyu increase its win rate by better
understanding its competitive positioning.
Approach
Transformation
Strategies identified about 20 specific service features and compared Venyu to
its most common competitors. “When we
brought in Transformation Strategies, it was clear they were approaching the
situation with our goals in mind”, says Brian Vandegrift, VP of Sales &
Marketing at Venyu. “They quickly understood our business and validated where
we thought our differentiators were, agreeing with most but also pointing out
some things we didn’t know.”
Among
other findings, Transformation Strategies created a competitive positioning
analysis that allowed Venyu to see how price point and feature set played out
in the industry. “This marketplace is
very dynamic and often appears chaotic”, says Vandegrift, “Transformation
Strategies developed a rationalized view which greatly helped our understanding
of what’s happening in the marketplace.
The impact of that was huge.”
Transformation
Strategies also created a “Competitive Playbook” for over a dozen specific, key
competitors telling Venyu’s sales team exactly how to position Venyu’s
differentiators in specific sales cycles. “In all my years of selling –
including some large corporations – I’ve never seen a company put competitive analysis
this insightful into the hands of salespeople”, says Vispoli.
Results
Based
in large part upon the results of Transformation Strategies’ analysis, Venyu
implemented strategic pricing actions. “We did it almost immediately because of
the credibility of Transformation Strategies’ work”, says Venyu CEO Scott
Thompson.
As a
result of Transformation Strategies’ work, Venyu’s sales team feels the
confidence that comes from approaching a sales cycle from a position of
strength. “We always knew we had a great service”, says Vandegrift”, “Now,
prospect by prospect, we are able to articulate it better than ever before.”
The result shows in the bottom line: in the first month after Transformation
Strategies’ analysis was completed, Venyu racked up its highest monthly sales
volume ever.