Over the next few months, we’ll take an inside look at how the NSCA 2020 Excellence in Business award winners have adapted to our constantly changing industry. For refocusing its sales and service strategies, CEC was named an NSCA 2020 Excellence in Business award winner in the Differentiating Strategies category.
Committing to managed services was just one move that Communications Engineering Company (CEC) made after studying what the market and its customers really needed – but it was perhaps the most necessary one.
Cedar Rapids, IA-based CEC saw the integration market changing in a few significant ways, which led to a revamp of its sales strategy, says CEO Kim Lehrman. “Our customers do not want to talk about boxes and connections. They want to talk about solutions and problems they want resolved.”
The company needed a sales structure centered on that premise. “We start with a consultative selling approach,” Lehrman says. “The technology is not even discussed at the front end. It’s really about the pain points an organization faces. What are they afraid of? What opportunities do they have? Then, based on that – and being a good partner – it’s about identifying technologies that could help with those issues.”
Check Out All 2020 Excellence in Business Award Winners
CEC’s new customer-focused sales strategy reflects several organizational shifts:
- The company redefined its ideal customer profile to focus on customers who see the most value in working with CEC.
- The sales organization was restructured so all salespeople can sell all solutions within their focused list of about 300 accounts.
- Sales teams underwent intense training with the use of product benefit/feature battle cards, vendor sessions, and biweekly product seminars.
- The company implemented weekly account planning sessions to better align goals and expectations with the focus of adding more value to five accounts each week.
Moving to Managed Services
Another significant shift for CEC is its commitment to managed services, which Lehrman says also reflects customers’ evolving needs. “Organizations want to spend their operating dollars and their people time on what makes them different in their industry,” she explains.
“The knowledge transfer of what our systems do is not as interesting as it used to be. They don’t want to have that expertise within their organization or put capital expenditures into things that don’t really move their strategy along. With the move to [managed services], we can really partner with them to show them how to use this technology – but they don’t have to have somebody inside managing it for them.”
CEC’s Managed Systems Program (MSP) focuses on the customer experience. Rolled out in early 2020 with a new sales compensation plan to transition away from project-based selling, it includes a built-in refresh cycle so customers can stay current with their technology.
The solution bundle includes a “whole product solution,” Lehrman says. “We provide an expectation of the lifetime use of the system, how it will work with customer service, warranty repair, hardware upgrades, software upgrades, cybersecurity, and more. The buying organization can make a decision about how deep into that system they want us to be. They can add any of the menu items in terms of back-end service into that three- or five-year contract.”
Early returns are extremely positive, with the company seeing significant additional revenue from the program since it allows for better margins and quicker project payments.
Learn More: 2020 Excellence in Business Award Winners
Check back as we continue to reveal how the 2020 NSCA Excellence in Business award winners made business changes to adapt to our constantly changing industry. You’ll also read stories from: