How businesses have benefited from our service

For years I have struggled to create a predictable new business system for our company.

We’ve tried trade shows, cold calling and content marketing at scale. Any successes with these were rarely repeatable and never scaled above ‘relationships’. Then I read The Machine. This application of Theory of Constraints to business-to-business sales, and having Justin Roff-Marsh come consult with my team, have been eye opening.

From starting his program in February, in less than ninety days, we have 14 requests for meetings from prospects and our first proposal is going out this week.

Ken Robbins
CEO | Response Mine Health

Headquartered in Sydney, Adaptra was founded in 1995 to provide project management services to the insurance sector.

Since our inception over a decade ago, Adaptra has expanded across a multitude of industries, helping them to streamline processes, and gain control over discretionary spend by ensuring organisational resources are effectively utilised to achieve desired business outcomes.

Adaptra’s suite of services includes Project services; Project management office (PMO) services; Application and IT services; and Business process management services.

We came across Ballistix via interest in their Sales Process Whitepaper. I was contacted by their Sales Coordinator and agreed to a Best Practice Briefing.

Given that discussion I was prepared to expand the discussion to a couple of other stakeholders which gave me enough ideas and awareness to organize a half day review with senior management. We then engaged Ballistix to run a one-day workshop with a combined sales and consultancy team to develop a feasibility plan. The findings were then presented to the senior management and eventually we agreed to proceed with a three-month engagement to implement new sales processes.

Over the duration of the project Ballistix helped us to:

Recruit and train a Sales Coordinator
Map out a consultative sales process and the associated management procedures,
Map out the pre-requisite activities that needed to be concluded in order to establish an efficient sales process
Decide on an adequate CRM, configuration and integrated the Ballistix MIS reporting system
Develop several approach letters and seminar invitations
Teach us how to interpret the MIS reporting system and how to use the report to run sales meetings

THE RESULTS

We are still at the very beginning of implementing the new sales process and the new sales promotion techniques are yet to generate the Best Practice Briefing opportunities required to keep our BDM busy.

The approach however has been useful in the following ways:

We have established a standard consultative selling process which is understood by the team.
All opportunities are being tracked against the standard process and we are starting to gain statistical information which will help plan promotional activities.
Advice given has helped us to save money on hiring a second BDM (i.e. you don’t need a second BDM until the first one is busy!)
We now have a trained Sales coordinator who is managing the process.
We have a CRM with an integrated MIS reporting system that helps track our BDM and process efficiency as well as detail tracking of all opportunities.
We have promotional ‘approach letters’ in place for all areas of our business.
We have a clear focus on getting our BDM busy with appointments ASAP.

THE EXPERIENCE IN DEALING WITH BALLISTIX

The project outcome based approach to the engagement was a little unusual at first, however we have found the focus on outcomes have meant a ‘whatever it takes’ approach to cover off each item.

All of the Ballistix people have been positive and generous with their time and have been prepared to offer advice and guidance beyond the specified area. We especially appreciated the challenging way the Ballistix people took to some of our old mindset ideas, delivered in the Best Practice Briefings, workshops and account reviews.

Regards,

DAVID PHILLIPS
General Manager, Sales & Marketing
Adaptra Project Management Services
TouchPoint Business Process Services
Website: www.adaptra.com.au

ATS Arrow is a Registered Training Organisation. We deliver government-funded training to clients’ employees in a large variety of blue chip companies.

We approached Ballistix for assistance with our sales process. With operations over three mainland states and a highly competitive industry, we wanted a more measured way to manage our sales process.

Ballistix soon helped us to recognise that the solution required was more complex than just adding a new sales coordinator. To remain ahead of the game we needed:

A formal approach to sales management;
A new product development process that enabled us to systematically design and deliver new, innovative training courses and;
a more efficient way of scheduling our trainers’ valuable time.

SALES

As typical to all Ballistix projects, we added a centralised sales coordinator to coordinate all sales opportunities within Victoria and South Australia and a management information system to maintain this process.

We also changed our sales process to a more consultative process, where our sales consultants completed a training audit with prospects to identify key training gaps as well as opportunities for government-funded training.

Other changes included:

The creation of a whitepaper
An excel-based eligibility calculator for the various government-funded training initiatives
A report template that automated the creation of client audit outcomes

NEW PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT

The development of new courses is important for our organisation. But like most organisations
caught in the daily demands of operations, we hadn’t always given the development of new courses
the attention it deserved.

Ballistix’s solution was to assign a NPD Coordinator whose responsibilities were to:

ensure that existing courses were current and compliant;
maintain a pipeline of new courses (for new and existing markets) and;
provide assistance with tenders.

Thanks to this new process it is no longer possible to neglect new product development in favour of more operational tasks — our NPD Coordinator won’t allow it! This has enabled us to take new training products to the market much faster and with a lot less last minute stress.

PRODUCTION (TRAINERS)

The last piece of the puzzle was the formalisation of production scheduling.

For us production is our trainers’ time. The more time they can spend out in the field training, the better the outcome for ATS Arrow.

Trainers’ diaries were put under the stewardship of customer support whose responsibility
was to schedule training according to the greatest contribution on each trainer’s finite capacity.

To aid this goal, a formal scheduling tool was built that allowed the utilisation of each trainer to be tracked, taking into account the type of training and travel time required from appointment to appointment.

The benefits were immediate. Trainer productivity increased without an undue increase in the total number of hours worked.

THE VERDICT

Although it will take us much more time than expected to really see the benefit of these new systems — particularly in sales— we are seeing positive signs.

We now have a much more measurable and considered way to approach things. We can effective measure what is working, what isn’t, and why!

Throughout, we have been impressed with Ballistix’s unwavering commitment. We found them supportive and genuinely interested in the success of our business.

What caught us by surprise most was the serious and unwavering commitment required by our entire management team to make it all work. Anything less and you risk losing the truly remarkable steps forwards this process can offer you.

Kind regards,

MACALA ASH
Managing Director
ATS Arrow

Without hesitation, I would recommend Ballistix to any business, small or large, who wants to increase sales and systemise workflow.

Despite the geographical barrier – (Ballistix are in Queensland and we are in Perth), Ballistix held our hand through every stage and have made what at the beginning seemed impossible, achievable.

We are a small bookkeeping and accounting practice used to time billing.

We have moved to project based fees under the guidance of Ballistix. Our existing client base embraced the new billing system which allows them to manage their cash flow.Our clients can liaise with us when required without the fear of additional fees and I would add that our clients don’t abuse this – they are as busy as we are and only contact us when the need arises. Systems were then tailored specific to our organisation to manage the workflow freeing up the capacity to embark on a marketing campaign (designed by Ballistix) and the ability to take on new clients.

I can’t speak highly enough of them and consider the money we spent with them to be the best investment I have made.

ROSIE DAVIDSON

CEO | Bas-Sol

Our dealings with the team at Ballistix was very good. We found all staff most helpful and very responsive to our needs.

Please find detailed below some specific points about the nature of our business, as well as an outline of the scope of work you conducted on our behalf and the experience we had dealing with you and the team at Ballistix.

CASF’s core business is the distribution of DuPont in Australia. As the distributor of Corian, we add value by eliminating friction between DuPont and the end users of Corian. Essentially we are responsible for generating demand for the product amongst end users, then ensuring we have timely and adequate supply to meet that demand.

Our initial project with Ballistix was to ensure we had a sales process that was scalable once implemented. The re-engineering project sonsisted of

• Designing the optimal sales process
• Developing management infrastructure to report and measure sales performance
• A structured and manageable promotional strategy
• A structured opportunity management process
• A structured communications program
• Recruit and train sales support personnel
• Project reviews

The results of the project were such that we identified our current constraint was not in fact in our sales process, but in supply (our fabricator network). We have been able to shift our focus to develop a plan to fix this constraint, and begin to move the constraint to our sales process.

Our dealings with the team at Ballistix was very good. We found all staff most helpful and very responsive to our needs. The focus of all concerned was directed to ensuring we achieved the necessary goals within the timeline outline in the project plan.

Best Regards,

CRAIG SMITH

Managing Director

The day Ballistix Managing Director Justin Roff Marsh walked into the offices of Drake International, he could see immediately that its sales force was operating at below optimum.

In reality, Drake was suffering from two core problems.

Firstly, chronic multi-tasking of the sales force which gave the perception of activity, but with no measurable increase in new business.

Secondly, Drake lacked the ability to communicate with potential clients at an executive level. This was a result of Drakes’ loss of reputation as leaders in recruitment. As a consequence of this market perception, Drake was stuck pitching to middle and lower management clients almost exclusively.

Rick Whitman is one of two Drake project managers who worked closely with Ballistix to apply a two-pronged solution to the problem. Over a nine month period Ballistix worked with Drake to restructure the sales process and develop new practices and a new methodology for the sales team.

“We implemented the Ballistix sales process for our internal sales team to increase the return on our large investment in sales people and gain greater control of their activities”, says Rick.

“The first phase was to re-assign administrative and lower-leverage jobs to the sales coordinators”, he adds. “This meant employing a team of eight sales coordinators who were responsible for setting 240 sales appointments a week”.

According to Rick, the key issues revolved around changing the attitude and behaviours of the sales team – they had to learn to release non-core sales activities to the sales coordinators.

“A good example of this is appointment making and post-call follow up – freeing the sales team by handing over their diary management allowed them to focus on selling and freed their time for face to face contact with clients”.

In fact, the Ballistix model advocates a ‘five appointments a day, five days a week’ salesperson productivity level, achieved by giving the responsibility for diary management and administration tasks to a sales coordinator.

“Any resistance soon dissipated when sales people saw twenty new appointments a week in their diaries with no cold-calling involved – they were able to use the Ballistix sales process to generate new business from these leads, which is what having face to face time creates”, he says.

Ballistix also built specific management information software for Drake that provided key information and statistics about the effectiveness of campaigns and the productivity of the sales team.

The Ballistix team worked closely with Drake management, challenging them to identify their core business offering and subsequent ‘manifesto’. This resulted in the development of the Drake Workforce Optimisation approach, a methodology that encompassed the essence of Drake’s product offering.

This was incorporated into the process and promoted via seminars, as Rick Whitman explains;

“At the same time we implemented the new sales process, we also launched an events program based around the Drake Workforce Optimisation approach. We invited C-level executives to attend breakfast seminars which we hosted and used as a unique selling platform, generating leads for our sales coordinators to follow”.

This program re-positioned Drake and gave relevance back to the business at an executive level.

“This allowed us to engage with senior level management and position ourselves as credible leaders in our field, who were capable of servicing high end markets, a position we had lost in previous years. The value of this market perception is immeasurable”, says Rick.

“By re-positioning ourselves as executive leaders we have increased our actual revenues by taking on higher paid commissions. We were also able to shine a light on our existing sales team – by taking back control of the sales process and using organised systems to measure the actual productivity of our team, we were able to address issues as they came up. It made communication straightforward and really boosted morale”, he adds.

“Average sales went from eight to nineteen a week within a few months – we are achieving high sales revenues and activities and importantly, high individual productivity from our sales team”.

According to Justin Roff-Marsh, it’s important to recognise and work with individual strengths. “Ballistix software allows management to see better than ever which sales people are good at selling new business and which are better as servicing existing accounts”, he says.

The Ballistix project has not only given Drake a new, more robust sales process but a process for consistently generating leads to funnel into the sales process with a seminar based marketing program.

This ‘buffer’ of leads is fundamental to the Ballistix sales process model as it provides a qualified ‘list’ of prospects to be scheduled into the salespeople’s diaries.

Based on his experience with the project, Rick feels that any business that has a team involved in business to business selling would benefit from adapting the Ballistix approach.

“In fact”, he adds, “it’s hard to think of a business that wouldn’t benefit”.

After the lunch with Justin, I walked away thinking “you know what…that guy’s onto something!”

We re-examined our priorities and started to take steps towards freeing our sales people to do what they do best, sell…and got instant results!

Our business became busier because our salesperson was seeing more people! We were doing more proposals and finally, the company was managing the relationship with the customer – not the salesperson.

Orders are now increasing and we have a focus – each day each of us understands what we’re doing and there’s no time wasted talking through process over and over again. We now get proposals out in a day not a week and we control margins and effort not the salesperson. We are tackling more complex tasks that they never would have gotten to before and it’s paying off in stock movement.

Thanks Justin for your insights and I will keep in touch!

Yours sincerely,

J.D. (JOE) TRIMBOLI

General Manager – Asia-Pacific
ecoBright® energy solutions Limited

I have no hesitation in recommending Ballistix’ services and would be happy to discuss our experience with interested parties.

EPR is a well-established (1992) company specialising in enabling executives and professionals to achieve exceptional results in their career development.

We pioneered this field in Australian and are the leaders in it, with offices in Melbourne and Sydney and Associates in all major cities in Australia and New Zealand.

When we engaged Ballistix at assist us in 2005, we had been experiencing a decline in enquiries over time, due in part to increased competition and more particularly to the buoyant job market for executives and professionals in recent years.

Ballistix helped us to redevelop our sales process from one commencing with the offer of a free consultation to one commencing with the offer of a free booklet. Some of the major aspects of the project were:

• Redesign of our advertisements
• Development of the booklet to be offered
• Development of a sales coordination process and training on the initial sales coordinators
• Assistance with implementing a seminar-based approach for those prospective clients who would not accept an invitation to a free consultation.

Ballistix also assisted us in developing a new channel to market by making us aware of an opportunity to sponsor a booklet for professionals, with leads passed on as a results.

Once the initial work had been completed and the booklet could be offered, responses increased dramatically. Initially, we experienced an increase in enquiries of around 150%. While expenses increased and the conversion rate from enquiry to initial consultation was lower than formerly, the exercise produced a significant improvement in overall results.

Results have tapered over time, due in part to a continued tightening of the overall employment market, and, we believe, to a need at this point to refresh the appeal of our offer. We are currently making adjustments and are confident that results can again be improved.

In our journey over the past several years, Ballistix has been an important partner. We have found them professional, supportive, genuinely interested in their clients and willing to ‘go the extra mile’. A consulting firm always has the opportunity to learn with its clients, and we see Ballistix as a firm that is continually learning and committed to passing the results of that learning. We have since used their services to redevelop our website and expect to continue to work with them well into the future.

I have no hesitation in recommending Ballistix’ services and would be happy to discuss our experience with interested parties.

Sincerely,

RUSSELL JOHNSON

Managing Director
EPR International

We have found Ballistix a pleasure to work with and the results they have brought our business speak for themselves.

Equinox Partners is a small executive recruitment business looking to transition from our small and specialized market base to a more broad based volume business model. Key to the strategy is to move from being account management focused to becoming a sales driven business.

The changes that we had in mind were a radical departure from what we had traditionally done and meant that the way we looking at marketing and selling our products and services had to change.

We engaged Ballistix initially to conduct a feasibility study from which we hoped to get an idea as to hope we might be able to improve the products that we were offering the market as well as the way we went about selling the product. Justin Roff-Marsh met with us for two days, and by listening to our ideas and thoughts as well as providing his own insight and experience, was able to devise a pathway forward for Equinox.

Together we engineered a Sales and Delivery process that was to be used to underpin our business. As well as the process, we put together strategies to increase our chances of getting new business and more importantly keeping it.

At that point we had the clear choice to go it alone or alternatively hire Ballistix to build on what we had devised and implement the project.

For a small business like Equinox, to implement this type of project involves a significant leap of faith as the costs are not insignificant. We decided that the Ballistix expertise was too valuable to miss out on and took steps to engage them on our implementation. This is a decision for which we have no regrets.

Rebecca Stokes was appointed our consultant and she quick built a working relationship
with both management and our new sales coordinator. Her professional approach and calm style worked well with our team and before long we had the frame work of the project working within our business. Though we took on a limited project, nothing was ever too much trouble and we certainly felt that all was done to ensure our projects success.

And it had undoubtedly been a success. In the 3 months since we implemented the project, we have visited over 100 new prospective customers and about 10% of those have trialed our service with another 20% making some level of commitment to trialing in the future. To put this into perspective, this has all been done with just one Sales Rep and one Sales Coordinator. In the previous 12 months we would not have visited 10 new prospects. We feel confident going forward that our sales will grow to reflect our sales efforts and the sales model in place means that all sales efforts are forward looking and productive.

We have found Ballistix a pleasure to work with and the results they have brought our business speak for themselves.

Regards,

JOHN CRUSE

Equinox Partners
Level 7, 51 Queen Street
MELBOURNE VIC AUSTRALIA

Our experience with Ballistix was absolutely great.

Hi-Heat Industries, Inc. is a small custom manufacturer of heating elements; we sell primarily to the original equipment manufacturers (OEM). We contracted with Ballistix to reengineer our sales process. A major result of the reengineering was separating the design from the sales position.

Since the inception of Hi-Heat 27 years ago, sales and design were inextricably intertwined. We also created the sales coordinator’s responsibilities, making her responsible for the on-going sales contact program and reports. Ballistix customized the Business Contact Manager program and reports.

Our experience with Ballistix was absolutely great. Justin Roff-Marsh exhibited a quality we would see repeatedly in Ballistix, accommodating to our specific situation. We don’t sell through face to face sales calls. Justin adapted the sales process to fit our model. Instead of trying to convince us to change, he adapted his proposal to us. We saw this flexibility repeatedly in all our contacts with Ballistix.

The very nature of a consulting contract has the possibility of creating resistance and divisiveness, since a natural reaction to change is no. However, we were fortunate; Katrina Rowe came to work with us. She helped us embrace change instead of being resistant to it. She did this by winning our respect; she is very knowledgeable, experienced and intelligent. By being disarmingly humorous and charming; she was able to break through our resistance and help us achieve our goals.

Our results are what we anticipated: sales measurements were created, software was developed to track the measurements, sample pack and instructions were created, advertising campaign’s tracking and new product development tracking were developed.

Again, we enjoyed working with Ballistix and believe that we got a great ROI.

Sincerely,

SUSAN KNEDLER GENERAL MANAGER