Compass Sales Premiers Successful Annual Sales Execution Summit

Compass Sales Solutions team at the event

Compass Sales Solutions, a leading sales force automation provider for the office technology industry, kicked off its first annual Sales Execution Summit in Las Vegas, Nevada during August 3-4, 2016.

The summit featured presentations by Monte Sloan of JD Young, Scott Shanafelt of Da-Com, Jay Feldman of LDI, Jim Donnellon and Tony Donnellon of Donnellon McCarthy, Patsy Cutler of Smile Business and Jim Dotter of Virginia Business Systems.  All of the speakers shared how they are successfully utilizing Compass Sales Solutions in their dealerships.

JD Young’s Monte Sloan delivered Managing Opportunities and Reporting Across Multiple Revenue Streams, which defined revenue streams as the building blocks of a business model. He pointed out that with Sherpa 4.0, dealers now have customized categories in opportunity pipeline and forecasting that is tailored to the way they run their business, giving them the ability to track sales from all the different business unit/specialist roles. He also emphasized that team selling is a common trend in today’s market with 80 percent of sales made on the 5th to 12th contact.

LDI’s Jay Feldman explained how a Successful MPS Execution strategy focuses on leveraging behavior modification tools to manage user behavior. Feldman also discussed how the Compass ezMPS tool helps dealers quickly price and prepare an MPS proposal as well as maintain profitability in their CPC rates for all the different printer models.  He urged the dealer attendees to focus on ongoing optimization with effective quarterly business reviews to help their customers get the most of MPS and to drive productivity change within their environment.

In Executing a Successful Client Lease Base Retention Strategy, Da-Com’s Scott Shanafelt explained how it was possible to get real-time, quick and easy access to an entire lease base using Sherpa 4.0 Lease Tracker and how SherpaGo helps develop and manage a Lease Base Retention Plan. He also explained that when a dealer prices out a transaction in Sherpa, they have proposal templates and customer paperwork right at their fingertips.

Other highlights of the two-day sessions included Contract Profitability in which LMI’s Doug Johnson spoke on the barriers to contract profitability.  Johnson explained the “tolerance stack” model and how dealers need to look at all variables to determine actual profitability.  Tolerance stack is when all of the variables in your system individually are within specs, but, the overall accumulation of individual variables can put you out of specs.

Marketing practices were also on the agenda. Roger Jung of Evolved Office explained why email marketing remains the most effective way to market business today. He demonstrated their “ready to go” content which is specifically designed for the office technology industry, and he showed dealers how using direct connect from Sherpa 4.0 allows them to schedule follow-up activities and communication with clients and prospects.

In Active Client Base Management, Compass’ Jim McMeel discussed how value and risk are the key drivers for implementing a base management strategy.  He explained that risk is minimized by having a good understanding of the base and by getting reps to understand their base.

He went on to show how Sherpa 4.0 enables dealers to develop strategies around ERP information, unmanaged devices, lease base, and UCC filings by using Sherpa Navigator custom filtering tools to data mine, helping to mitigate risk and win more business.

The overall reaction from attendees was very positive. All seemed to come away very pleased with the content and the focus of the event, particularly the opportunity to meet with developers and other dealers.

“Having been through the roll out and integration across four dealers, the progression of the platform is second to none!” raved Russ Kromminga of Century Business Technologies. “It helped me as a sales rep when I first started, and got me to $1 Million in sales in 3 years. It has also helped me as a manager to work with my reps and let them reach their potential faster and with less frustration.”

“Great meeting,” declared Patsy Cutler of Smile Business Products. “Very well thought through by the Compass team. All the guest speakers added value to the event, and also best deliverables across the board. Well worth the time out of the office. Can’t wait for next year!”

Added Dorothy Jones of RJ Young: “I liked the opportunity to network and hear from other dealers. I got to hear what is working for others and what they are having challenges with. I enjoyed learning more about integrations and modules that we aren’t currently utilizing.”