ARCHIVAS develops online storage management solutions for the long-term storage of fixed-content digital assets.

They were considering building an inside sales team to expand the reach of their sales organization but first wanted to understand the return on investment they would receive if they focused the group on specific verticals. To accomplish this goal, ARCHIVAS hired The Bridge Group to conduct a Market Validation Program.

Asim Zaheer, the Vice President of Marketing for ARCHIVAS, describes The Bridge Group engagement and the benefits that they brought to ARCHIVAS’ strategic planning

An Outside Perspective on Strategic Challenges

I first heard of The Bridge Group when Trish Bertuzzi, their president, cold called me and left me a very targeted message on how their services could help ARCHIVAS. I was intrigued enough to call her back and schedule a meeting. At the time, we were exploring two different initiatives that I thought The Bridge Group might help us with. The first involved the concept of supplementing our sales organization with an inside sales function that would identify and develop leads as well as follow up on the large volume of leads we were receiving from other sources. The second initiative involved looking into two vertical markets to see if they were markets worth pursuing for our products.

Before meeting with The Bridge Group, we were ready to jump in and build an inside sales function right away or at least assess what was necessary to do so. But during our meeting, The Bridge Group suggested we consider a phased approach. The initial phase would include a Market Validation program, which is a service that The Bridge Group offers to test messaging and value propositions that help determine market readiness. We decided to go with their recommendation, as it would allow us to collect baseline metrics and build a team based on real world data and not just assumptions.

During the Market Validation process, we tested the concept of an inside sales organization on two very different vertical markets that we were interested in: financial services and the Federal Government. The Bridge Group consultant who performed the Market Validation service worked both onsite and offsite for two months. During this time, she learned that in the financial services market, there are a variety of people who have an influence on how archiving and compliance solutions like ARCHIVAS’ are implemented. She also discovered that these people are hard to identify and reach and, consequently, success in this market requires a very specific sales process that is both broad and deep.

Within the Federal market, The Bridge Group consultant learned that it’s easier to identify the decision makers and reach the people directly responsible for archiving and compliance. However, she also identified several issues that we would need to address in order to sell to this market, such the role of integrators and master contractors. We learned through her initiatives that selling into the Federal market is somewhat slower overall and requires both a direct and a partner strategy.

Through the work of The Bridge Group consultant, my company gained valuable market data and because of this, we have been able to build a new, more success-driven strategy for moving forward.

Before working with The Bridge Group, our approach to growing our sales organization was opportunistic, with conclusions that were drawn from a very small sample of organizations within the market segments we wanted to explore. This is a very dangerous way of making a major strategic decision and The Bridge Group helped us recognize that. They approached our challenges in a very scientific way, both in their methodology and with the quantity of people that they reached out to. This helped us validate some of the assumptions we already had and gave us new learning in each of the markets that we were interested in, which was very important.

We’re still looking at building an inside sales group, but we’re approaching it in a different, more intelligent manner than we would have without the help of The Bridge Group. Based on their recommendation, we have realized that the most successful route for us is to staff up our direct sales function before adding an inside sales function.

In support of this effort, we have given our direct sales staff a Sales Playbook that The Bridge Group developed as a deliverable for the Market Validation program. The information in the Playbook is valuable, with methodologies and messaging that the direct sales staff was immediately able to put to use.

One of the best attributes of working with The Bridge Group is that they really understand what inside sales is all about. It sounds somewhat simplistic to make that statement, but it implies a lot. So many companies feel that inside sales is easy, that it’s not complicated, and all it takes is hiring someone who has good rap over the phone – you just drop them into your company and let them start calling. To do it right is a lot more complicated than that and that’s what The Bridge Group brings to the table. They have the subject matter expertise on inside sales, they know what is appropriate for whatever stage your company and products are in, they know how to measure success, and how to test your ROI. That level of expertise is not inherent in many companies at all.

Working with The Bridge Group was terrific. They complemented their subject matter expertise with a very good personal style in terms of being very flexible and very easy to work with. They are also very good at listening and digesting what you give them and working with that. They are very professional, excellent at what they do, a pleasure to work with, and they are very nice people!

If a company has any inclination to do, assess, evaluate, or implement an inside sales function, The Bridge Group consultants are the “go-to” guys.