Success Stories -
Venyu
Transformation Strategies helps leading national service provider in On-Line Backup and Recovery get competitive insight and accelerate their sales
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 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.