Hitachi Vantara
Hitachi, Ltd. (TSE: 6501, “Hitachi”) launched Hitachi Vantara to help commercial and industrial enterprises extract actionable insights from their data, a business’s greatest asset. More than ever, data holds the key to new revenue streams, better customer experiences, improved market insights, and lower costs of doing business. Hitachi Vantara’s comprehensive, data-driven solutions enable customers to manage, store, govern, blend, analyze, and visualize data to uncover its true potential.
Results at a glance
- 3x increase in bookings quarter over quarter
- Reduced sales cycle time
- Improved win rate
The Challenge
By bringing together its data infrastructure, data analytics, and IoT business into one organization, Hitachi was poised to provide greater value to customers who wanted to make sense of their data. With Hitachi Vantara as a partner, customers could reap the benefits of truly transforming their businesses by maximizing the data they had on-hand.
In 2021, Dale Knipp, Head of Digital Sales, North America at Hitachi Vantara, inherited a sales organization comprised of multiple teams with multiple sales approaches. The team members had been through an enormous shift and were facing more changes. Strategically, he knew that a consistent sales approach focused on the buyer’s journey would serve as a catalyst for cohesion.
Dale needed to create a single, scalable sales organization, and accelerate revenue growth. He was a proponent of the ValueSelling Framework® sales methodology after witnessing firsthand how it worked to move deals efficiently through the pipeline and create bi-directional and cross-functional communication—from sales to service and back to sales. Amid the chaos, he leaned on ValueSelling to unify the global team.
Business issues
- Unify and scale the business with an easy-to-follow, consultative sales framework
- Improve customer intimacy by increasing competence and confidence in solving customer problems versus reciting features and functions
- Drive repeatable success across industry verticals
There are a lot of sales methodologies. ValueSelling isn’t a way of sales. It’s THE way.
The Solution
The sales team, senior management, and colleagues from nine industry verticals participated in the ValueSelling sales training, which provided a foundation for a single sales approach and common cross-functional language to discuss existing and new account opportunities.
A continuous learning program that included eLearning, instructor-led training, monthly reinforcement, and coaching helped drive adoption.
Managers inspected deals and asked reps to complete ValuePrompters® to guide the sales conversation and literally get everyone on the same page.
Because peers from the industry verticals attended ValueSelling training, they understood how to collaborate with their sales counterparts and increase the probability of success at all levels—sales team, industry vertical, geographic, and organizational.
As Dale said, “If you embed ValueSelling into your process, you’ll be more successful. You’ve got to get everyone speaking the same language, looking at deals the same way, and focused on delivering value to the customer.”
The Results
Within a few months of using the ValueSelling Framework, the Hitachi Vantara sales team accelerated deals through (and out) of the pipeline for more realistic forecasting. Asking insightful questions, they uncovered opportunities and increased average deal value by the millions.
Using the Qualified Prospect Formula™, a manager knew within five minutes whether a deal would close. And by researching and preparing for sales meetings, reps were clear on the specific actions to take to drive results. ValueSelling was the compass for the next step.
By the end of the year, the team logged its best quarter in years. This quarter, they’re set to beat last quarter. Dale and his team have built a foundation for continued growth and scale. They have come together to achieve revenue goals, all by keeping things simple.
- 3x increase in bookings quarter over quarter
- Reduced sales cycle time
- Improved win rate
