Tools for Ramping Your Channel Sales Immediately

Some of Roger Liston's Bigger Wins..

Intel's Operation Crush. When Intel launched their avante-garde X86 family of processors, they lost almost every -- 9 of 10 -- design-in opportunities, for six months. Having investing over $20 million to promote this new product, and seeing no improvement to their win rate, they hired Roger Liston, to teach their sales force how to start winning designs with this new and very important product..

Roger taught their 75 sales managers using his newly created training that integrated product information into a better sales process. Intel's win rate rose immediately, and with 90 days, achieved a 75% win-rate.

Thirty days later, they won the most important computer design-in ever; the processor socket for IBM's then-new Personal Computer. This campaign, knows as "Operation Crush," as in "crush Motorola," is legendary in the semiconductor industry and is described in detail by William Davidow's best seller, "Marketing High Tech." For Intel, product-specific sales skills training made the critical difference. An article about this new sales-skills based product training was also featured in Training Magazine.

Seagate Technology had acquired CDC's disk division resulting in a product lineup that confused the Channel so thoroughly that sales dropped by 50% within 30 days of the merger. Liston was tasked to create a system that would enable neophyte sellers to conduct sales as well as the factory reps, and enable them in only 30 minutes. This new system really worked.

Once they knew how to use the sales guides, Channel reps started having positive, authoritative, and high-margin selling experiences. This is what every rep really wants from a sales job. Consistently positive sales experiences like these created both growth and Channel loyalty--a lasting market share--without having to "buy" it with the lowest prices or best spiffs.

Seagate's Channel share went on to increase 21 points from 33% to 54% in two years. This increase in market share also put 70 of 250 competitors out of business. Once they could not sell against Seagate on the basis of price, they could not sell.

NEC Computers had scheduled $10 million of print advertising to kick launch of their new 120-person consultative phone sales team, starting with a series of full-page ads in the Wall Street Journal. However, with the launch date only a month away, their new team's sales training had not worked. After six weeks of intensive training, their reps still could not configure a system, even a basic one. With tens of millions at stake, Roger Liston was contracted to make their sales team effective in determining needs and configuring systems immediately to meet specific needs.

NEC's new training, which also integrated product information into their sales process, took 50% less time, delivered the needed knowledge and skills, enabling NEC to launch their new sales division on time. Product training---built into their selling processes -- saved the day for NEC.

Adobe Technologies could not get the Channel to use their carefully designed and highly effective long-term agreements. Powerful sales tools, their agreements locked-in a customer's business for up to three years. Adobe had been trying for eight years to get the Channel to use them, but the Channel just did not "get it."

After the Liston Group de-mystified how and when to use each one—as well as what was in it for the resellers--the Channel suddenly started using them. Adobe used the Liston-designed training as the centerpiece of their next year's reseller campaign, increasing the Channel's use of long-term contracts by 400% over the previous year.

Simplified training that was based on a simple approach; "Door Number 1, Door Number 2, ....their contracts became an easy concept to grasp, spiking their Channel revenues and giving them a record year of profits--profits they soon used to acquire Macromedia.

Roger Liston is granted patent pending status for the very important business process known as Creating the Desire to Buy. After twenty years of research, Roger discovered how to induce this biochemical state of mild anxiety known as the desire to buy.

Anyone who has bought a car or house they really wanted has experienced this highly motivating form of tension. Creating this desire to buy is the very skill every sales course claims to deliver, yet none has ever stated explicitly the steps needed to create this state in buyers. Armed with this easy to learn process, sellers may now sell virtually any product or service faster, more effectively, and at higher margins than ever before. It is a simple four-step process that virtually anyone can follow.

Articles

Roger Liston created the Seagate, Quantum, Samsung, and Fujitsu sales guides (over 2.8 million printed in three languages), and was the key source for a Sales and Marketing Magazine article on how to train international sales teams: Small World, Big Challenge. He authored the only article on product training ever printed, Product Training That Works, in Training Magazine. These articles are available on our Downloads page.