The Bridge Group - Inside sales consultants

      Eduventures has been committed to improving higher education since its founding in 1993. Today, we partner with more than 300 colleges and universities across the United States. Our research membership programs and consulting services help higher education leaders achieve organizational goals and solve pressing challenges with evidence-based insights and guidance.

The Challenge: Improve Win Ratio
Although Eduventures had a sufficient number of qualified opportunities in their sales pipeline, they wanted an uptick in their win ratio. In an effort to do so, the company needed to learn more about the sales engagements where prospects opted not to purchase their research offerings.
The Engagement: The CloseRate Accelerator Program
Eduventures brought in The Bridge Group to conduct their CloseRate Accelerator Program, a unique win/loss analysis that consists of both web surveys and phone interviews. The objective of this program is to compare lost opportunities, collect feedback, and analyze relevant information that can be used to drive change.

The Bridge Group worked with Eduventures to create a series of questions for key decision makers that probed for the specific reasons why these prospects were no longer engaged with the company. Including:
  • Eduventures’ understanding of the prospects’ challenges
  • Competitive offerings being considered
  • How prospects viewed current services and suggestions for future offerings
  • The impact of pricing on the evaluation process
  • The likelihood of future purchase
The Results: A Concrete Action Plan
As a result of the CloseRate Accelerator Program, Eduventures learned that many of their current initiatives were right on track. They also discovered that many organizations were still contemplating purchasing. Eduventures gained valuable insights into several other areas that will improve their sales efforts overall, including:
  • The actual decision-making process encompasses more influencers and decision-makers than Eduventures initially targeted.
  • Supporting marketing materials, such as the website, case studies, and white papers could be more effectively used when specifically targeted at various levels of decision makers.
  • A broader appeal could be achieved through the re-packaging or bundling of their services.
A Third-party Perspective is Key

Comments from Abigail Callahan, Managing Vice President, Knowledge Management and New Program Development
On what The Bridge Group delivered

“I appreciated and valued the knowledgeable perspective that The Bridge Group brought to this engagement. As an objective third party, they were able to develop the survey questions, gather the pertinent data, and provide us with a professional and unbiased analysis of why we were losing sales and what steps we should take to improve our close rate.”