Buyer Interviews - steercom

References Buyer Interviews

Interviews

Leading your customers with clear messages.

Read short interviews with satisfied customers.

Stefan Merz
Managing Director, Chief Strategy & Product Officer, PPRO

I just want to start by asking you about the Sales Excellence Program for PPRO – why did you hire steercom?

Stefan: We wanted to train our sales execs in turning complex topics into simple messages

What has changed after the two runs?

Stefan: Lots of things – our sales organization is much more aware of the importance of the right messaging. They understood that the frontloading makes the difference, not the PowerPoints. And finally, we were able to win some important leads. The coaching of steercom has made a contribution to this.

And one final question. You have really had one of these amazing global careers. You hold senior executive positions at Siemens, HP and Diebold Nixdorf and now at PPRO – tell us about your key message to the next generation in terms of professional development.

Stefan: Learn to communicate the right messages and go the extra-mile for the “so what”. Turn around your perspective and think from the recipient side. It is not about you, it is about them.

Manuel Paterna
Regional Sales VP EMEA, Amdocs

14 of your SALES REPS FROM 10 countries pitching for technology business at a telco company. How did it go?

Manuel: From the start and preparation through the execution and also the presentations the teams did was a super nice experience. Six parallel teams actually worked on their respective propositions on real-life engagements. Your focused coaching helped us a lot to pinpoint the key criteria to win such deals. In the meantime we even had some success, so it has proven to be successful.

The best outcome for me was to create more transparency between the teams; each team had their own tactics and approaches. And by making this visible, we could leverage between each other and learn from each other, create new ideas for all teams.

The interaction and collaboration was marvelous and creates a totally different team approach. So I would say, it’s true team-building.

We did it remotely, without any personal contact. How would you rate this experience?

Manuel: I have to admit, in the beginning I was a bit sceptic. First of all it provides a lot of flexibility, because you can do one session within 2-3 hours which fits well into our schedule. However, the most significant benefit is, that it saves a lot of time and effort to coordinate, set aside all travel cost that would have been associated to it if you would do it face-2-face. Most important was working with MIRO whiteboard, an online collaboration tool that allows teams to work and present their sales strategy, engagement plans and relationship maps in realtime.

It was a super nice experience. We got very focused coaching from you guys even on an hourly basis. Very pin-pointed, super efficient, I like it a lot!

Thats also for our own benefit. Thank you for working together!

Manuel: We will do it again, Carsten!