This case explores the founding story of German enterprise software company Celonis and its early attempts to globally scale and expand into the complex U.S. enterprise software market. After achieving success co-selling with a single ERP partner with dominant market share in Europe, Celonis' founders and sales teams must learn to test and adopt different go-to-market motions and forms of incentive alignment in the larger and more strategically complex North American software market.
This case describes the evolution of the customer success function through the rise of Gainsight. It discusses the responsibilities of the customer success function, measuring and compensating customer success teams, and the return on investment for adding a customer success organization. It also describes some of the different forms customer success can take across firms.
The Birch Benders case follows the story of Matt LaCasse and Lizzie Ackerman as they embark on a journey to make the world's best pancake mix. Through their trials and tribulations, the readers learn of the nuances involved in crafting an immaculate pancake recipe and then developing a business around it through effective branding, packaging, and distribution strategies. They realize that to scale the company successfully, they must retool their sales strategy. The case details LaCasse and Ackerman's search for a new VP of Sales, as well as a discussion on what the ideal candidate might look like.
Atlassian: Sales examines the company's unique, no-touch sales model for enterprise products that help teams track projects, collaborate, and build products. The case explores how the company developed and sold its first product, JIRA, and how early lessons helped shape the company's no-touch sales model for all subsequent products. It then discusses the organizational effects of a low-price, volume-based model, and how the advocacy team and channel partners serve as keys to success for the approach.
The case profiles Sujay Jaswa, VP of Business Development at the enterprise software company Dropbox, along with the company's "freemium" business model and Dropbox's sales organization to date. The case discusses the mechanics of a freemium product offering, as well as Dropbox's sales activities to date, which have largely been automated and emphasize inside online sales. With the product's evolution, the company's continued growth, and a shifting customer profile, Jaswa deliberates whether a change to the company's sales organization is merited, and if so, what the structure of such an organization should be. In particular, Jaswa debates whether the company has reached a point in its life cycle that requires an "outbound", direct sales force.
The case highlights the evolution of a wide-area-network (WAN) optimization company from its founding day to its potential IPO. It explores the various challenges faced by management along the way, both in terms of determining what characteristics are needed in VP of sales role as well as how to determine which go-to-market model is most appropriate. OptiGen emphasizes the risks of channel conflict and forecasting inaccuracies, particularly for a company that wants to go public. The case opens with Robert Campos, CEO of OptiGen, preparing for a series of meetings with investment banks to discuss the prospects of an IPO. His company has recently missed its operating plan for the second time in three quarters. Campos is concerned that the spotty track record will harm its chances on the public market. Campos highlights two key, interrelated problems that must be addressed immediately: a broken forecasting process and inconsistent quarter-over-quarter revenue growth. Internally, there is no connection between the forecasts provided by the sales team at the beginning of any given quarter and the operating plan set forth by management.
With the competitive 2007 holiday season approaching, Gary Hawkins (CEO of Green Hills Market, an independent grocery retailer in Syracuse, NY) was looking for a promotional program that would keep his best customers coming to Green Hills for all of their holiday meal shopping. Hawkins knew that his larger competitors (such as Price Chopper, Wegmans, and Wal-Mart) would use their size and buying power to procure products at the lowest possible cost, enabling them to offer rock bottom prices. Hawkins was looking for a program that would take advantage of Green Hills' proprietary systems for tracking customers' buying patterns and shopping preferences. The promotional program under consideration was a continuity program, in which shoppers earned points that could be redeemed for pieces of Arzberg porcelain. Hawkins and his team needed to establish their objectives for the holiday season and decide whether or not the Arzberg promotion was right for Green Hills Market. The case can be accompanied by a data set ("M318 Green Hills Data Set") that captures weekly expenditures by a sample of 1000 households shopping at Green Hills Market before, during, and after the Arzberg promotional program. The students can use these data (and other information available in the case) to examine how well the Arzberg promotion actually worked. "M318 Green Hills Data Set" can be obtained from [email protected].
Ann Rothman, newly arrived Executive Vice President of Global Sales at Quantium Technology needs to address the challenges associated with Quantium's implementation of Siebel Sales, a sales force automation (SFA) software solution. Sales representatives were abandoning the system, sales managers were complaining that sales pipeline data in the system were not accurate, and the system did not appear to be increasing win rate or shortening the sales cycle as expected. Rothman needed to decide how to resolve the problems, which meant either fixing the system or abandoning the project altogether.
Corey Leibow eased his car back onto Sand Hill Road in Palo Alto, California. As president and CEO of Mercado, a company that provided the search and merchandising technology to power retail web sites, he had just met with another venture capital (VC) firm in an effort to raise a $26-million Series E round of financing. It was June 2008 and Mercado currently offered both on-premise and on-demand or "software as a service (SaaS)" versions of its applications. Despite the fact that revenue from both solutions was projected to grow in excess of 80 percent that year, Leibow found that investors generally pushed back on the company's hybrid approach to distribution. Some VCs wanted Mercado to focus solely on its traditional enterprise business based on a perpetual, on-premise licensing model. Other investors preferred to see Mercado morph into a pure play SaaS company. Leibow knew that he had to make a decision quickly in order to raise the capital the company needed, but he also wondered if it was possible to continue pursuing both angles. The choice he made would significantly affect Mercado's sales force and R&D team as well as which customers the company targeted and how it would attract and retain them.
Set in mid-2002, this case illustrates "a day in the life" of a district sales manager of a Silicon Valley company, as the technology market faced a downturn. The case enables a polarized class discussion about the tradeoffs that a new district manager might make relative to hiring / firing and setting quotas, after inheriting a mixed bag of talent in an underperforming district. It also seeks to provide with additional texture about the types of challenges and activities that such an individual would face (different from those faced by a sales representative). The case enables students to engage in discussions about four key dilemmas faced by the district manager: (a) Which representatives should he retain in his district, and which should he fire?, (b) How should he negotiate quotas/goals with his superior (regional manager), and with his representatives?, (c) Should he train an employee who will likely fall short of the company's growth goals, or replace him in hopes of hiring on a better performer?, and (d) What should Jim do about an employee who appears to insist in putting the customer's interests ahead of the company's?
In November 1997, Richard D. Fairbank, Chairman and CEO of Capital One Financial Corporation, was reflecting on the success of his company since its initial public offering (IPO) in 1994. The success had come primarily from one business: credit cards. Despite the phenomenal success of the company in this one market, Fairbank's vision for the company was not limited to credit cards. He wanted to diversify to reduce Capital One's vulnerability to consumer credit market saturation and downturns. Fairbank also saw an opportunity to extend Capital One's capabilities into other markets. He saw Capital One as not just a credit card or financial services company but rather as an information-based marketing company. Because Capital One's strategy would work well in other information-driven industries, Fairbank's idea was to concentrate on growing, data-rich industries--large enough to contribute significantly to the company's growth trajectory--and focus on products and marketing channels where Capital One could leverage its capabilities in scientific testing and mass customization. Despite having investigated over 50 diversification opportunities, Capital One was not pursuing any, largely because they were a poor fit or failed to capitalize on Capital One's core competencies. A recent hire, Mike Rowen, and his team, however, had just finished a four-month long investigation into the auto financing industry. It was up to Rowen and his team to decide whether to present auto financing as the right opportunity for leveraging Capital One's information-based strategic capabilities. The team knew that if it recommended going ahead, it would have to put forth a plan that would address any concerns or objections raised by Fairbank.
Mark Jacoby, VP of the Americas sales organization at Clearion, a fictional software firm, has missed his quota for the first time in his career at the company. He needs to reevaluate his strategies for setting quotas, allocating headcount, and assigning territories. Describes the changes he makes and asks students to consider making improvements on them.
Scalix Corporation, a Linux-based, e-mail and calendaring software company, was founded in 2002 by Julie Hanna Farris while she was an entrepreneur-in-residence (EIR) at Mayfield, a venture capital firm in Menlo Park, CA. Describes the evolution of Scalix's sales model. As a start-up company, it attempted to sell directly to CIOs of large enterprises. After facing an uphill battle in that market and then experiencing a few successful sales to small public sector accounts, the company corrected its course.
Bausch & Lomb (B&L) was in a crisis situation when Ron Zarrella took the helm in late November 2001. Following the departure of the COO in 2000 and the CEO earlier in 2001, Bausch & Lomb had undergone six quarters of restructuring and had laid off 10% of its workforce. A company known for cutting-edge innovation and the ability to evolve to stay relevant to customer needs, B&L had become a company in turmoil. Revenue had been flat for the past several quarters, with margins slowly eroding due to lack of disciplined cost management. The company carried excess overhead from duplicate departments that remained as a result of two large acquisitions made in 1997. A patent infringement lawsuit against B&L's key contact lens product threatened the future revenue stream and B&L's stock had already dropped more than 50%. It was in this environment that the Americas sales region had begun a major reorganization. Zarrella felt that he had no choice but to be cautiously optimistic. The 'Stronger as One: One vision, One goal, One team' reorganization had been underway for several months, merging the region's four sales forces into one. Even though lackluster financial performance indicated the need for change, Zarrella wondered whether 'Stronger as One' would return B&L to its rightful position in the market, or whether such a large reorganization would create more problems than it solved.
Examines three fictional vignettes concerning ethical dilemmas in the sales force, presenting the perspective of the CEO or VP of sales. Lundberg Systems is a fictional company that develops call center solutions, including call distribution systems, headsets, and call center software. The first vignette features a VP of sales who must decide whether to take advantage of a junior employee to win new business. The second vignette looks at the potential sexual harassment of a junior employee by a customer. The third vignette presents a potentially questionable accounting practice.
Details the challenges facing OuterBay in pursuing an OEM deal with a very large and well-established technology company, EMC. Describes both companies' businesses, the history of their relationship, and the initial discussion surrounding an OEM deal. Looks at the particular issues that surfaced in the ensuing negotiation, including revenue sharing, term limits, exclusivity, and account control. Negotiations dragged on over several months, with the two companies exchanging 14 versions of the letter of intent. OuterBay's CEO, Michael Howard, wonders whether the deal will make or break the company.
The case offers an overview of a startup that has chosen to sell its solutions entirely through indirect channels-currently through value-added resellers (VARs) and, in the future, through both VARs and systems integrators (SIs). In the case, we discuss why the company chose a channel strategy, how management devised its marketing, product development, and pricing scheme for channel selling, the steps the company undertook to build its VAR network, and the costs of building such a channel. We also touch on how the company motivates, supports, and evaluates this network. We discuss issues such as pricing and bundling, dealing with under-performing VARs, and fundraising from a venture community that traditionally shuns companies that sell indirectly.
In October 1998, VERITAS and Seagate's Network Storage and Management Group, which both sold data storage management software, agreed to merge. In terms of employee size and revenues, it was nearly a merger of equals. Until regulatory approval for the merger was granted from the government under the Hart-Scott-Rodino (HSR) Act, the two companies could share only public information, initially limiting due diligence. The companies received HSR approval on December 4, 1998. It had been clear from public information that the two companies offered different products, sold through different channels of distribution, and captured two different customer segments of the market. After all, these differences were regarded as complements and the major justification behind the merger. However, what was not so apparent until HSR approval was the clash in sales force cultures. Paul Sallaberry, an executive at pre-merger VERITAS, assumed the role of executive vice-president of worldwide sales and marketing after the merger. Sallaberry needed to design a sales force integration plan that would take the company to billions of dollars in sales within the next few years without sacrificing any short-term sales momentum. To do so, he had to resolve the issues at hand: culture clashes, disparate compensation structures, overlapping territories, and redundant management positions.
Peter Kelly became CEO of Med-Mart, a home health supply company, shortly after his search fund acquired it in 1993. Unfortunately, at the time of purchase, Med-Mart's sales growth, inventories, and receivables had been grossly overstated, leading to a precarious financial situation once these errors were discovered after the acquisition was completed. During the summer of 1995, Kelly hired Tim Martin as Med-Mart's vice-president of sales to boost sales and help rescue Med-Mart from financial peril. However, Martin's proposal to increase sales involved refocusing Med-Mart from thousands of products down to just a few high-margin products, eliminating over 80% of current revenues. Kelly was wary of implementing such a drastic plan and knew that success was wholly dependent on the ability of the sales force to increase sales of the few remaining products dramatically. Kelly thought they could reorient the sales force to implement Med-Mart's proposed change in strategy effectively by changing the commission scheme. Kelly's next step was to design this new commission plan, considering the dollar value and timing of commission payments, as well as any thresholds, caps, or ramping of commissions. He wondered how the sales force would react to a compensation revamp and handle selling only one primary product.