Growing revenue by training sales to tell a bigger story
Industry type: Technology
If you’re looking to grow revenue fast, update your sales pitch and the rest will follow. When the corporate sales team at $1B software company Veeam® realized their enterprise story needed to evolve, they turned to Duarte to lead the renovation. Read on for a blueprint to sales enablement success!
Challenge
Veeam faced the challenge of making their technical pitch resonate with non-technical business decision-makers. They also needed to maintain brand consistency amid varied messaging in a competitive market.
Solution
Using Duarte's VisualStory™ principles and global "Storytelling for Sellers" training, Veeam effectively shifted their pitch from technical features to business outcomes.
Result
Following the "Storytelling for Sellers" training and adopting a refined narrative, over 5,000 Veeam sales reps worldwide left Launchpad with renewed enthusiasm and a customer-centric message, ready for success.
Services
- Event keynote
- Sales enablement
- Sales presentation
- Sales training
The background
Veeam, the global leader in data protection and ransomware recovery, built a huge fan base by delivering superior solutions that over 450,000 companies rely on every day. New technology created exciting opportunities to keep businesses running at their best, so Veeam’s sales team wanted a bigger story plus the skills to tell it well. It was time to renovate their reps’ decks and delivery. Enter Duarte!
The challenge
Like any successful company, Veeam has a great product with a compelling value proposition. Their existing story worked well when pitching technical experts in an organization, but it needed to evolve for business decision-makers who would likely never use Veeam’s technology. Sales reps tried to fill the gap by making their own pitches for enterprise buyers, leading to inconsistent messaging and a disjointed brand voice. A strong, unified voice was critical to stand out in a saturated market.
The solution
With input from Veeam’s marketing team and top-performing reps, Duarte completely revamped their pitch using VisualStory® principles that upleveled conversations from product features to business outcomes. Then we rolled it out at Launchpad – Veeam’s global sales kickoff – leading simultaneous “Storytelling for Sellers” trainings on three continents in five cities to drive rapid adoption. As a result, Veeam transformed the way it lands enterprise deals.
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Our process
To quickly align on the core story, Duarte facilitated a series of short working sessions with key stakeholders to profile Veeam’s target audiences, crystallize the Big Idea™ and supporting messages, and shape them into a story arc that Duarte’s designers translated into visually impactful slides. Meanwhile, we mapped out learning objectives and activities for the training and prepped facilitators to bring it all to life.
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Our insights
For most tech companies, the shift from talking about feeds and speeds to focusing on business value feels like a big leap. When selling any kind of change—to customers or employees—it helps to paint a picture of “What could be” so people can see the benefit of adopting a different approach. To evangelize the revamped corporate story, Duarte enlisted the same Veeam reps we interviewed early on to share why they felt confident it would elevate their customer conversations and expand deal sizes.
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Our approach
Before the kickoff event, we equipped Veeam’s team with a teaser video to get sales excited about the story they’d be hearing at Launchpad. On the big day, our storytellers appeared on-site (in Kuala Lumpur, Yerevan, Bucharest, and Atlanta) to unveil the new pitch and teach reps to give it. A demo by a Veeam exec showed reps how to deliver the pitch, while Duarte’s story coaches trained regional cohorts on the best ways to adapt it for each customer situation.
The outcome
Reps left Launchpad charged up to sell with what a senior Veeam exec called our “beautifully crafted message.” Hearing testimonials directly from reps who helped shape the narrative, the sales team could finally see what could be by reframing their dialogue with customer-centric, business-relevant messages. There’s no stopping them now!
Launchpad was nothing short of #Veeamazing!
THANK YOU for the amazing effort you all have put into helping us make our Launchpad event spectacular!