Case Study

Worldwide Application Lifecycle Management solution provider uses WhiteboardSelling to unify entire company on a single corporate message; sales teams use highly effective whiteboard selling method to engage with more prospects and develop more sales and service opportunities.

Founded in 1983, Borland Software Corp. (NASDAQ: BORL) is the leading vendor of Open Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) solutions – open to customers' processes, tools and platforms – providing the flexibility to manage, measure, and improve the software delivery process.

Borland has a large installed base of customers worldwide and a diverse software product line comprised of both legacy applications and new products. In an increasingly competitive market, the company needed a more unified vision of its core value proposition. With many versions of “what Borland does” floating around the company, Borland launched a global initiative to unify its entire workforce on one core corporate message, which centered on transforming the software delivery lifecycle into a Managed Business Process. Borland wanted everyone on staff to understand the company’s powerful value proposition, so they in turn could help customers and prospects realize the potential of making software delivery more measurable, predictable, and cost effective.

Borland wanted everyone on staff – from management and marketing, to sales and service – to connect with this corporate message, so they could approach their work from this singular focus. Borland delivered this message at its annual sales kickoff, also known as Borland University, which was attended by over 200 employees in sales, consulting, system engineering, marketing, tech support, and other departments. Held in Las Vegas in January 2009, the event was the perfect place to share the company’s new messaging and core value proposition with the entire team.

But Borland didn’t know how to best communicate this new positioning so that each person could clearly understand it. PowerPoint® simply would not do; Borland wanted an interactive, engaging, and fun method that would help employees really understand the new positioning and "know it cold."

Borland decided to use the WhiteboardSelling^® interactive sales enablement solution to deliver its key corporate message not only to its sales team, but to the entire company.

Borland first worked with the WhiteboardSelling team to create an interactive whiteboard that conveyed the company’s new positioning in a clear and compelling way. During this process, Borland collected comments from management, sales, marketing, R&D and consulting teams, with the WhiteboardSelling team facilitating these messaging meetings and helping to distill all of the feedback into one clear corporate message.

Next, Borland trained all of its field employees and critical headquarter staff at the Borland University event, effectively communicating the new messaging to everyone in the company.

Finally, Borland held a series of local meetings with sales teams in the U.S. and EMEA called the Worldwide Certification Program, certifying each sales rep in the WhiteboardSelling sales methodology. Sales reps left these sessions fully prepared to deliver exciting and compelling sales presentations, recreating Borland’s key value proposition on any writing surface in meeting rooms around the world.

The WhiteboardSelling Workbench^® was critical to Borland’s success in certifying that all field personnel had the capability to deliver the whiteboard story.  The WhiteboardSelling Workbench allowed all certification scores to be captured in a consistent fashion using laptops instead of sheets of paper. The WhiteboardSelling Workbench dynamically captured and analyzed all certification data, and allowed sales managers to access analytic dashboards displaying the performance of the entire field organization, ranked by area, region, district, and down to the individual.

The WhiteboardSelling Workbench also dynamically generated a personalized certification report and education plan for each participant, allowing Borland to "micro-target" enablement and training to each individual based on their strength and growth areas uncovered during certification. That way, sales management could preserve "time-to-sell" by only taking sales reps out of the field for specific training courses.

"Whiteboard Certification is establishing a culture of sales excellence at Borland, and the WhiteboardSelling Workbench platform was essential in making sure all data was captured consistently and immediately available so we could see trends in sales behavior and understand how our field resources could be further optimized," said Rich Novak, senior vice president of field operations at Borland. "The technology makes this process repeatable, accurate, and consistent."

Borland is already seeing impressive sales results after implementing the WhiteboardSelling solution. Because sales people are now highly confident in communicating Borland’s key value proposition to prospects using a simple writing surface, they have been able to more deeply engage with potential customers in an interactive conversation that allows prospects to share their unique pain points, specific challenges and most importantly critical business issues. What’s more, in a highly competitive market, Borland® sales stand out from the crowd – delivering interactive sales presentations that are clearly differentiated in a sea of PowerPoint boredom.

Already, Borland sales reps have found that the whiteboard selling method has resulted in more repeat sales meetings, as well as greater interest in its Application Lifecycle Value Profile, which is a technical and economic assessment of the customer’s software delivery lifecycle. This “next step” after the Whiteboard presentation assures that Borland’s sales reps and the customer agree to proceed with the sales cycle only after they together identify tangible business and economic gains. In the process, both Borland and the customer use their resources more effectively, so they can make better buy and sell-side decisions.

 

• Borland effectively communicated a unified corporate message to its entire workforce
• Borland trained its global sales and service team to sell more effectively
• Borland sales teams can now confidently communicate the company’s core value proposition using nothing more than a whiteboard or pad of paper
• Borland now stands out from competition with a differentiated sales approach that helps customers make more informed buying decisions

"As a smaller company competing against large incumbent vendors like IBM and HP, we now have a differentiated sales tool that really helps our sales and service professionals deliver a compelling and interactive presentation that clearly adds value to the customers’ decision-making process – and helps Borland move engagements forward in a more meaningful way,” said Rich Novak, senior vice president of field operations at Borland.

“WhiteboardSelling has given not only our sales team, but our entire company, a common vocabulary and consistent message that we can deliver to prospects. Our sales teams in particular have elevated our message, penetrating higher and broader into accounts, and developed more substantial sales and service opportunities in our target markets."