I'm sure you've all heard this line before! As Director of Sales at Scribe Software, I have to say I am a firm believer in change – and more importantly, I'm happy to be the one to 'go first'. Why? Because Change IS good! (But please don't misinterpret my message. Change for the sake of change is not prudent. With any change in business or in your personal life, there's always some risk. You do need to weigh the associated risks)
In 2008 Scribe embarked on offering a new enterprise integration product – Scribe Insight Enterprise. This was quite a change considering our history of market leadership for integration in the mid-market, and it would require a number of internal changes to how we approach a specific market segment.
As you may be aware, Scribe has always employed and believes strongly in the channel sales model – and growing up in the mid-market space this makes all the sense in the world. As we learned very quickly, simply announcing a product to fit in the enterprise world in 2008 was not enough to result in the sales volume we were hoping for. The majority of our existing reselling partners typically did not sell into large enterprises, so broad based selling through the majority of these partners just did not materialize. So how do we adjust to address a market (enterprise) where an ISV needs to be 'high touch', onsite, and deeply in tune with the end customer's requirements to be successful? The easy answer is – hey – we'll sell direct! This could be the kiss of death for any channel focused ISV who attempts it. We knew we had to change to effectively address this space, but how can we do it so both Scribe AND our reselling partners benefit?
The calendar turns to 2009 ushering in yet another change - enter the Major Accounts Group at Scribe. After modest sales of our enterprise products in 2008, we really needed to change our sales approach. Establishing the Major Accounts Group at Scribe allowed us to put people in place with enterprise selling skills that could work hand in hand in the field with our vendor partners and our reselling partners to provide the focused 'high touch' attention required for enterprise type prospects. The Major Accounts Group not only focused on being in front of enterprise customers with our vendor partners such as Microsoft and Salesforce, we also focused a more intense effort on recruiting and training partners on Scribe who focused on large, complex CRM and ERP implementations – those partners that Microsoft and Salesforce would typically engage at the enterprise level as well. So whether Scribe ends up selling Insight Enterprise through a reselling partner or direct (in consort with a partner) to an end customer - some customers in this space prefer or require a direct procurement - partners are always made whole. Everyone wins – both Scribe and the reselling partner win large projects and make significantly more revenue as a result.
As a result of the changes in early 2009, we grew our enterprise business fourfold in unit numbers and revenue, while selling through or in conjunction with 18 Scribe Enterprise Partners in our US and EMEA regions – with 4 of these partners doing multiple deals. Of our top revenue producing partners for 2009, 7 out of 10 were selling Scribe Insight Enterprise in their solutions portfolio and had each sold at least one enterprise deal.
More 'change' is on the horizon at Scribe for 2010. In our recent newsletter, we announced the expansion of our sales team by doubling our Regional Business Managers based in the field. In addition to our corporate locations in Bedford, NH and Den Haag, Netherlands, Scribe's US region now has a local sales presence in Boston, Atlanta, Minneapolis, and Portland to help serve our reselling partners better and, and as part of our Major Accounts Team, the Regional Business Managers are there to provide the local 'high touch' needed to help our partners win in the enterprise space. (see our sales team map) The Major Accounts model allowed us and our reselling partners enjoy solid revenue growth in 2009 despite the challenging economy and we are looking forward to a solid 2010 ahead.
So change? We'll go first – why not join us?
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