“Once you have the foundation of a shared sales playbook, now your work on deal strategy gets a lot more pinpointed,” explains Damian Jones, Sr. Dir. of Sales and Account Management at BESLER. “Each deal is a little bit different, but if you have built strong skills around your foundational plays, your team has the fluency to rapidly adjust.”

BESLER is a leading company specializing in hospital revenue integrity and reimbursement solutions. Damian joined the company at a time when sales had stalled. The existing sales team struggled with a lack of fluency in the company’s products and services and found it challenging to implement a consultative selling process effectively. 

Damian worked to unstick growth with an intentional approach to building a new, more consultative sales strategy and process anchored on a shared set of sales playbooks.

After 12 months of focused work of shared playbooks, playbook-based skills coaching, target deal work and skill coaching, BESLER had its strongest sales year in a decade.

I recently talked to Damian to learn about his process for sales acceleration.

1) Building Playbooks for a Consultative Sales Approach 

For Damian, the sales reset all started with shared sales playbooks.  Playbooks allowed for much more targeted skills coaching and pinpointed deal strategy. This approach provided the sales team with a foundational framework, a shared language and a common approach to managing each type of buyer interaction. Within this framework, they had the flexibility to adapt and customize their approach based on the specific needs of each client. 

Damian says: “We built that into our structure and our foundation of what we were already doing… We can play with all those different tools that we’ve learned. But it all fits right into that initial structure and foundation developed with Winalytics that we’ve built off of.”

2) Playbook-Based Training

The sales team underwent comprehensive training that equipped them with the essential skills and knowledge to excel in their roles. They became well-versed in the consultative selling approach and learned how to leverage it to deliver maximum value to clients.

“Playbooks make it possible to use your deals and account work to act as a living and breathing curriculum,” says Damian, “It makes it possible for peers to work on the same skills using the same language.”

Training on the playbooks enabled the sales team to be more strategic in their approach. They could now focus on higher-level strategizing, diving into deal strategy, discovery, and negotiation, rather than getting bogged down in traditional sales methodologies.

3) Targeted Deal Strategy & Skills Coaching

One of the most significant advantages of this transformation was the ability to focus on deal strategy and coaching in a more pinpointed manner. Damian says: “For me, it’s a lot easier to talk about strategy when you don’t have to go back to basics. You can go on this in our process. We can do this. And this is what we’ll strategize around.”

The impact of BESLER’s sales team transformation was strikingly evident in the company’s financial performance. In 2022, BESLER witnessed an impressive 35% increase in new revenue compared to the previous year and achieved its best sales year in a decade. The average contract value doubled, and the pipeline doubled, serving as tangible proof of the effectiveness of the new sales strategy and the remarkable improvement in the sales team’s performance.

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As the sales team has progressed through their process, Damian’s level of confidence in their current deal status has significantly increased compared to 12-18 months ago. He says: “When I assess specific deals, I’m more confident that our team now has a clearer understanding of potential outcomes, rather than relying on guesswork. This, of course, enables us to make more accurate forecasts.”

The story of BESLER serves as a compelling case for companies seeking to revitalize their sales efforts. It underscores the importance of shared playbooks, targeted playbook-based training to capture and share best peer practices to sharpen the focus on strategic value-based selling. By building a foundation and fostering a culture of continuous improvement, companies can not only overcome challenges but also thrive in today’s competitive business landscape. BESLER’s journey is a reminder that with the right strategy and commitment to transformation, success is within reach.