Many (mostly industrial) organizations have gone from no growth to over 20% annual growth

Justin, thank you for your time on this project. I just wanted to say that I can’t commend you highly enough on the value you have provided to my business.

Within a few hours of commencing this project, I was already getting enormous value. Your clear cut no BS approach to breaking a business down into it’s components and analyzing these for what they are was amazing. I know have a very clear plan that I believe will deliver a greater outcome at a lower cost.

Sincerely,

FRANK STILLONE

The Silent Partner

FRANK STILLONE

Superior Glove is Canada’s largest work glove manufacturer. The company sells specialized work gloves across North America and Europe to companies such as Toyota Manufacturing, US Steel and Alcelormittal.

Joe Geng, Superior Glove’s President was attracted to Ballistix as he believed the consultancy’s Sales Process Engineering (SPE) methodology offered a solution to his firm’s lack of clarity around the sales process.

Joe explains:

“We really had no idea what was happening day to day with our sales team. We had a gut feeling that our sales team was spending too much time on customer service issues but no way to measure how bad the situation really was.”

More specifically, Joe had concerns that sales leads weren’t being followed-up a timely manner (sometimes not at all) and the sales team was underutilized partially due to structuring sales territories on guess work.

An unfortunate consequence of this situation was that it was taking Superior Glove at least a year to determine if a new hire was effective.

“We tried in the past implementing a CRM system to help us manage our sales force and get a better understanding of what was going on in the field. This failed miserably,” explains Joe.

“Our sales management spent a lot time chasing our sales team to report on CRM but the results were spotty. Our sales team wanted to spend time selling not filling in reports on our CRM.”

Looking for a solution they reached out to Ballistix.

“We were impressed with Ballistix’s Sales Process Engineering methodology and decided to commission a project,” adds Joe.

After a challenging and exhaustive Solution Design Workshop a number of critical changes to the current sales process were mapped out:

Add a sales coordinator for every two salespeople. The goal was to give the team sales coordinators to manage calendars, book appointments, follow up leads and so on to free up a huge chunk of time so the sales people could focus on what they do best—sell!.

Restructure the customer service department to ensure that customer issues were being handled properly. This was to dramatically reduce the number of customer issues and repeat order calls that were preventing the sales team from focusing on new sales.

Implement a systematic work flow for finding and adding new distributors. In spite of the fact that a critical key for growth was finding and building relationships with new distributors, there was no formal plan in place.

Implement a sales reporting system. The data required for this report was entered by the sales coordinators and viewed by the sales manager and sales team each week.

Joe was delighted how well the changes went and, more importantly, how well the changes were embraced by the sales team.

“Most salespeople were thrilled to hand over customer service, appointment setting and sales reporting to the sales coordinators and spend all their time in front of customers, generating new business,”, adds said Joe.

According to Joe, the sales Management Information System (MIS ) implemented by Ballistix was a big breakthrough.

“The MIS was managed by the sales coordinators, not the sales people. This was huge,” explains Joe..

“It allowed us to have an accurate view of what was going on in each sales territory. This allowed our sales management to see ahead of time where we were having issues and take the appropriate actions to improve the situation. For example, we were able to see territories where a salesperson was underutilized and increase marketing efforts in that area or help the salesperson to find and set up new distributors.”.

THE RESULTS

Joe reports in the 9 months since working with Ballistix, the sales team utilization has increased dramatically to sit at an average of 80% across the entire team. More importantly, overall sales have increased by 10% in a difficult economic environment with a massive 50% increase in US sales.

“Another big breakthrough is that we now have the visibility to see if a new sales person is working out within months, not years. This has given us the confidence to add new sales people and develop new territories at a much faster pace than we ever previously dreamed possible,” concludes Joe.

JOE GENG
Superior Glove
President

JOE GENG

Southern Cross Truck Rental provides short- and long-term rental of trucks and trailers and has been servicing the rental needs of transport companies and associations across sout-west Sydney for the last 3 years.

In the past we found that Sales Representatives were difficult to manage and retain which resulted in Southern Cross Truck Rentals having no dedicated sales people and lacking a formal sales process.

Ballistix was looked upon to provide an alternative approach to our deficient sales process.

Ballistix consultants worked hands-on in our business conducting the following activities:

• Designing and implementing formal sales processes and supporting technology
• Recruiting necessary personnel
• Coaching team members and management on their critical contributions to the process
• Managing the development and integration of technology (reporting)
• Fine-tuning the project plan
• As a result of the project we are showing increase in activity, positive feedback from customers and have acquired new accounts.

During the 3 month project we found Ballistix to be dedicated, courteous and very responsive to our needs.

I have no hesitation recommending Ballistix’ services and would be happy to clarify this statement.

Yours sincerely,

STEPHEN BLACKMORE

Director

STEPHEN BLACKMORE

Ronstan is an Australian manufacturer of sailing equipment and stainless steel architectural fittings.

We engaged Justin of Ballistix to conduct a Solution Design Workshop as we set about a review of the way our sales force is managed, looking for new direction.

Justin’s approach was extremely effective and impressive. At the two day workshop he demonstrated an ability to understand our business and it nuances, and to tailor a solution and structure that made great commercial sense. He was very insightful and intelligent with all comments, observations and questions.

The work shop has contributed in a meaningful and significant way to our planning in the sales area. We anticipate being a far more effective sales organisation as a result of Justin’s work and we will certainly be considering using Ballistix again in an expanded role.

Managing Director

Ronstan

Ronstan

Programmed Property Services is the largest provider of Trade services in Australia in New Zealand; we have over 5000 long term maintenance contracts in Australia.

One of our core services is long term painting services. This is a part of our business that has seen very minimal growth in the last 5 years.

We engaged Ballistix to see how their system could reverse this trend.

The Ballistix process was very different to any system we have used before. Initially we were concerned that making such a drastic change to the way we currently do business could be quite disastrous. We decided to roll out the process only in 2 states and in our metropolitan offices only. This was done intentionally, to minimize the impact if the system was not successful.

The key changes we made were employing 2 sales coordinators, who effectively took control of our 4 sales peoples diaries. We also engaged a part time market research person who is assisted by our marketing manager, to develop and maintain campaigns. The sales co-coordinators were trained well in the Ballistix system and have proven to be the key factor in making this system work. We also took away the mundane day to day sales reporting functions and non sales related tasks away from our sales team.

The system was executed reasonably smoothly, some initial IT problems were soon resolved and the system was in place quite promptly. After some initial hesitance from our existing sales team, of which some members have been with the business over 15years, the system was adapted by them and now is a routine.

The system has been operating in our business for over 3 months now and although it is very early to give a true indication, so far the results have been outstanding. Our sales team has seen more NEW customers in a 3 month period that we would normally not see over a 6 month period. Our general sales inquiry is up about 40% in this new customer market. Our current win results have not yet been significantly increased, however our sales cycle is normally 6-8 months, we expect to have some of this enquiry converted within the next 3 months.

I would have no hesitation in recommending the Ballistix system to any organisation that is looking to increase the sales activity of their sale force and to better manage the capacity of their sales staff.

Yours sincerely,

NATHAN D’COUTO

Programmed Property Services

NATHAN D’COUTO

Just a short note to let you know that our recent project to restructure the sales team has exceeded all our expectations.

We began this process after seeing a decline in our percentage of tenders won and receiving customer feedback that we had lost intimate contact with the market.

After an extensive restructure of our sales process we are seeing a much improved success rate on tenders, greater face-to-face customer contact and revitalized employees who have a clear understanding of their role in the team.

As always, you and your team were easy to work with and represented the height of professionalism in offering consulting services.

Please pass on my thanks to your team and we look forward to working with you in the future.

ANDREW OKELY

Manager Minerals Processing
Outotec Pty Ltd

ANDREW OKELY

I recommended Justin and Ballistix to my senior management and BOD to undertake the ‘re-engineering’ of our sales process.

We are in a mature marketplace with excess capacity, and overzealous competitors. Justin’s science/methodology is proving to be the proper medicine for our ailing sales approach. We are enthused by the early results, and look forward to repeatable, scalable and reliable sales.

KEITH OGLIVIE

Midwesco

KEITH OGLIVIE

Metromix is based in the state of NSW in Australia and operates three quarries which supplies the local construction materials market.

We normally sell approximately 1 million tones per annum. As a revenue improvement project we identified the benefits of being able to sell an extra 10% and what that would do our profit.

We at Metromix agreed to use the Ballistix sales process to try and achieve that goal.

What Ballistix did for us, was to run a workshop flowcharting the ‘current sales process’ and then with the input of the sales team flowchart ‘the proposed sales process’. Once the proposed sales process was agreed upon, the process of resourcing the project with additional staff and software commenced. In our case, we needed to recruit a sales coordinator and a field sales person.

The project was launched and the people were trained in the process required.

Would you believe since the launch of the project, the demand for our products has been well
above average and has put enormous pressure on our production staff. With that in mind our focus has been on selling our low volume/high margin products during this period. Although it’s too early to evaluate the sales process we are well and truly committed to it.

We enjoyed working with Ballistix and I believe the main reason our companies work well
together was simply the team was committed to the process. My only advice is that should you wish to use the Ballistix Sales Process, be committed to the project or don’t bother.

We are very much looking forward to 2008.

Yours faithfully,

WILLIAM SANDERSON

Quarries Manager
Metromix Pty Ltd

WILLIAM SANDERSON

When Will Swayne, CEO of Marketing Results first met with Ballistix he was about to embark on a marketing campaign. I t soon turned out that the business’ real constraint lay in production capacity. He didn’t need to sell more: He needed to make more!

Since engaging Ballisitix Marketing Results has boosted productivity by 50 per cent, and the enhancement has been achieved in just 20 per cent of the time it typically takes.

Will explains: “We have applied TOC in many ways to a reasonably sophisticated level in our sales process. Incoming calls are now taken by a sales coordinator who has an initial chat with the prospect, sends out the company’s literature and books them in for a half-hour consultation with me. The coordinator later sends out any relevant information and follows up.”

“By taking more calls each day they can really drive lead generation, so we are maximizing a scarce resource and that relieves me of many processes. Instead of taking five hours to get a sale it takes just one hour.”

Will believes adopted properly the increase in throughput is massive.

“As a business owner you have to have the discipline to focus on the right things — your strengths. Today sales and production are the constraints, so the focus is on hiring and training for more growth.”

WILL SWAYNE

CEO | Marketing Results

Will Swayne

..and now that we have a team focused solely on sales, we’re opening up a number of new doors with our existing client base.

DESCRIPTION OF FIRM

Intégro is a leadership development consultancy that helps transform organisational cultures through the development of trustbased leadership. The business has two primary divisions: we distribute Inscape Publishing Inc. Behavioural profiles throughout Australia and New Zealand – the best known being the DiSC range of profiles; we are also a global leadership development consulting company.

SITUATION BEFORE BALLISTIX

Intégro has been in business for over 30 years and during this time has established a strong client base for our profiles, and a reputation as being “the DiSC people”. In recent years our emphasis has been largely on product development within niche areas of leadership development, which has generated significant interest in our process–based methodology. We recognised that in order to accelerate the growth of the business we would require a formal sales process, with particular emphasis on opportunity management. We are a relationship–focussed business, and all of our current team were also responsible for facilitation and consulting in addition to the sales function. Struggling to follow up post–marketing activity due to the consultants’ hectic schedules, it became evident that we required a dedicated sales team to grow the business and pursue the opportunities.

THE STRATEGY DEVISED

Following our initial contact with Ballistix, our team agreed that the feasibility study
was an essential starting point to review our current sales process. A few of the key findings from this study highlighted the fact that our business model could incorporate a dedicated sales person without affecting our ability to deliver the consistency of relationship between the sales function and delivery. The other significant decision was that we needed to change our approach to marketing. In previous years our marketing was sporadic and ultimately challenging to effectively follow up leads. So incorporating a more process–based, fluid marketing approach was not only preferable to implement, but effective as well.

EXECUTION

One of the key recommendations we have is maintaining a clear understanding of your goals for the project and communicating that with Ballistix. This worked well for us, as we had been operating with a somewhat informal approach to sales management. This meant that introducing a sales “process” was new territory for the team and it took some time to gain the clarity needed regarding the benefits of being process–driven in our sales cycle. Through continuing to use open communication, and through the sales meetings, we’ve been able to find a steady rhythm that works well for our business. This includes following the Ballistix process and maintaining one of our core operating values, which requires flexibility in approach to task.

RESULTS

The addition of the sales team and the installation of the MIS have really shown us the greatest benefit. The MIS is practical and functional, as it helps us to see exactly where we are at with our opportunities. From a business management perspective, this has been one of the most valuable assets. The dedicated sales team is also working well for us by gaining us more access into our current client base. We have a number of people who purchase product from us and now that we have a team focussed solely on sales, we’re opening up a number of new doors with our existing client base.

As we are only a few months from the end of the official project with Ballistix, we have not seen a significant increase in the number of sales quite yet, not withstanding economic and cyclic influences. We are confident that the increase in appointments (up about 10 per week) and new business opportunities that we are uncovering, will continue to see us gain the growth that we are seeking. We also expect to expand this sales process model into our international organisations.

If you require any further information, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Sincerely,

LAUREN AYERS

Marketing Director

LAUREN AYERS

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

SUSAN KNEDLER

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

JOHN CRUSE

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

RUSSELL JOHNSON

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

J.D. (JOE) TRIMBOLI

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”.

Rick Whitman

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

CRAIG SMITH

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

ROSIE DAVIDSON

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

Macala Ash

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

David Phillips

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

Ken Robbins