A sales driven culture can separate the wheat from the chaff in a highly competitive market. The companies with superior sales talent, processes and resources outperform their peers, and stand out as the leaders of their market.
Scalar Decisions is one of Canada’s fastest growing technology companies. They’ve been featured in the Profit 500 list five years in a row, and they architect, deliver and manage some of the most complex IT systems in North America.
Paul Kerr, President of Scalar explains, “To get on the Profit list once is relatively easy, but getting on there four or five years in a row is fairly tough to do because you need consistent, high growth.”
“We’re in the technology industry, but we’re a sales company. Even though we pride ourselves in our technical skill sets, we have a highly efficient sales machine. We know how to run the business of sales. And where I see my competitors not growing is because they don’t have a good sales organization. They’re very smart people, very strong technically, but they just haven’t figured out the business of sales. And for what they aren’t is what we are, and that’s what fuels our high growth,” continues Paul.
Sales is an asset
As Paul points out, sales is a business. It’s a core skill and asset just like finance, operations or IT. And mastering the business of sales can be a key differentiator in a highly competitive and undifferentiated sector.
Scalar nurtures a sales driven organization both in attitude and process. Paul says, “We’re not a traditional pyramid organization. Our sales people are the conduit to the customer, and they lead our business. So culturally we’re an inverted pyramid with our customers at the top and the sales people are there to support them.”
Scalar’s approach goes far beyond hiring good sales talent and paying them well. They approach sales with process and rigor. “For the most part, every part of our business is there to support our sales people, because they’re there to support our customers. You’re either built that way, or you’re not. And that’s a key differentiator in any high growth company.”
Strong relationships create opportunities
You can interchange the phrases “sales focused” or “customer focused” to describe Scalar’s approach. By building strong customer relationships creates opportunities and opens up new doors.
Scalar was founded in 2004 as an IT hardware company. Ten years later they’ve evolved from selling and shipping equipment into a complete IT services company.
Paul Explains, “We built great relationships with our customers, and many of our customers kept coming back to us and saying, ‘We don’t have the people to manage this on an ongoing basis. Will you run it for us?'” Scalar responded to the demand, and expanded their capabilities to architect, design, build and manage mission critical IT infrastructure.
Your brand is built by stepping up and serving your customers. Scalar was able to capitalize on the market demand, because they were customer focused and attentive to their customers’ needs.
Sales facilitates success
Sales people are not a bunch of talking heads that build relationships and close deals. That’s an old and jaded view of sales.
Sales people are facilitators. They connect the needs and wants of their customers with the capabilities of their organization. They make things happen, open up opportunities, and create relationships that stick.
