Conduct an analysis and advise

116 views 8:52 am 0 Comments September 18, 2023

The Vice President of Sales has asked you to assist her with these 2 questions.

She has asked you to explain, with little ambiguity, each of the components and the relationship between them for business strategy, marketing strategy, and sales strategy for a start-up Canadian company offering complex SAAS-based products/services to small to enterprise-sized customers across Canada and hopefully in the USA by next year. (500 words)

The Vice President has asked you to conduct an analysis and advise her on any changes she should make to her sales strategy as she prepares to go to market. The details on current situation are below. (1500-2000 words)

Case Scenario #1:

This is a new company that is forming. The company is XYZ, a provider of hosted customer relationship management (“CRM”) software for companies that operate in professional service businesses. CRM software allows these professional service businesses to manage all interactions with the customer both before, during and after they become a customer.

CRM has been around for the past 20+ years so most executives in professional service businesses are aware of it and its importance. The challenge always comes down to a new task situation where you are competing against many other vendors.

XYZ is based out of Toronto and is launching across Canada for the next year or two. XYZ provides a suite of software, integration services and training programs targeted at professional services firms of all sizes that operate on a fee for service model. This includes small independent professional services firms (1-5 employees) such as lawn care to painters to accountants and also larger players such as national lawn care chains and national painter franchises and national professional services firms such as consultants, accountants and lawyers. XYZ is well positioned because they are the easiest to use, best price and focus on just the functions and features that are critical in managing a professional services and generating a material business return from the investment in CRM.

The details of the business are as follows:

XYZ provides full suite CRM software and services that are used by marketing, sales, support and services. These solutions involve many different software components, extensive integration and training depending upon the size of the customer. For small firms the process is very straightforward as there is typically very little integration, and training is largely self-service. The only real issue in the small firms is that the owner who is the decision maker typically has worries about items such as security with respect to where their data is stored and whether it is safe.

XYZ bills on a monthly recurring revenue model based on # of users. On average the charge is $100 per user per month.

There are a number of competitors. The largest are Salesforce.com and Oracle, which have a large commercial presence already in Canada.

There are also more than 50 niche CRM providers ranging from industry to industry, small to large companies, public to private, profit and not for profit. It is a very competitive space as many of these providers have solutions that can be used by professional services firms. The challenge here is in being able to get the time to communicate the differentiation that XYZ brings.

XYZ is planning to utilize social media and content marketing as the primary elements of their inbound marketing communication program with a focus on lead generation. However, in the next year as the company launches management is not expecting that while it will generate some inbound leads it is not expected to be a reliable source of good quality leads.

A recent report in a Top US Professional Services Magazine outlined how CRM is becoming increasingly complex for mid to large customers as they demand more features, functions and service for less money. The situation facing vendors is that it is more and more expensive to design these CRM applications and there is considerable downward pressure on pricing plans.

The VP also stressed to you some concerns about the increasingly centralized approach to buying becoming more and more common at even smaller and smaller companies. She even joked about a 2 person company asking for XYZ to prepare a 50 page submission to an RFP issued by the company for CRM solution.

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