case study : spss

Internal Sales Guides Give SPSS Sales Representatives an Edge in Winning New Customers, Supporting Existing Customers

Problem: SPSS Inc.'s worldwide sales force had trouble gathering relevant product information before meeting with customers—an obstacle to closing sales and support existing customers.

Solution: Jumping Bean developed a library of internal sales guides that went beyond brochures and spec sheets. The sales guides provide sales with the information they need to close sales with new customers—and to support existing customers.

At SPSS Inc., a leading data mining software company, its worldwide sales force could not easily find key product and customer information for Clementine, one of the company's flagship data mining solutions. Although the company had a company-wide intranet, its sales force still had trouble tracking relevant product information before meeting with customers-an obstacle to closing sales and support existing customers.

Clementine product manager, Peter Caron, asked Jumping Bean to develop a library of internal sales guides for the UK sales team.

"We asked Jumping Bean to learn a lot about the data mining business in a very short period of time," said Caron. "Our goal with the sales guides was to give our worldwide sales force an edge when selling Clementine to new customers. That means providing them with a centralized spot where they could easily find important customer, product, and technical information.

"The sales guides also needed to educate sales with some of the technical aspects of Clementine so they could talk to IT [information technology] people intelligently."

Jumping Bean Works with Sales to Understand Their Customer Needs

"Before we could begin writing," said Blythe Howard, co-founder of Jumping Bean, "we needed to understand what SPSS sales representatives were looking for-to understand their needs and how SPSS could support them in their sales efforts."

The SPSS sales team identified as its biggest problem a lack of compelling practical information that demonstrated Clementine's benefits to potential customers.

Compounding this problem was the fact that customers spanned a number of different vertical markets, and each market used Clementine differently to solve industry-specific problems. Clementine customers can be found in banking, insurance, manufacturing, automotive, telecommunications, and airlines industries.

"Brochures and spec sheets were not enough for the sales team," continued Howard. "Sales wanted information to show customers that SPSS understood their concerns-and more importantly, how customers could use Clementine to solve specific business problems."

Easy Access to Information Enables Sales to Speak Easily with Marketing, IT, and Support

To address sales' needs, Jumping Bean and Caron organized every sales guide around a technical "how to" section. Each "how to" section is unique for each vertical market, and describes how customers can use Clementine to solve industry-specific problems, ranging from fraud detection and customer retention to market segmentation and cross-selling.

To give sales as much intelligence as possible, Jumping Bean also included information in each sales guide on unique conditions in each vertical market, including sales cycle, case studies, technical specifications, and a list of potential and existing customers.

"The wide range of information in each sales guide gives our sales team the information they need to speak easily with their customers' marketing, IT, and support staff," said Caron.

To make sure sales representatives can quickly find information on Clementine before meeting with a customer, Jumping Bean developed a template that organized every sales guide in the same way.

To foster better collaboration among sales team members, each sales guide is a "living document." Sales representatives can constantly share updates and other important information with other team members using the sales guides as a centralized repository of information.

SPSS has asked Jumping Bean to participate on a number of different marketing projects, including developing Web site content, creating ad copy, writing a script for an interactive demo, and writing white papers and technical briefings.

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