Company: Numara Software, Tampa, FL
Entry Submitted By: Greenough Communications
Company Description: Serving over 50,000 customer sites worldwide, Numara Software is a global leader in providing practical service management software solutions. From a single technician running a help desk to 1000 technicians managing a complex service desk, organizations of all sizes trust the company's solutions to track requests, automate workflows and support internal and external customers.
Nomination Category: Sales Achievement Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Sales Process of the Year

Nomination Title: Numara Software's Situation Specific Sales Process

1. Tell the story about your organization's sales process implementation since the beginning of July last year (up to 500 words). Focus on specific accomplishments, and relate these accomplishments to past performance or industry norms. Be sure to mention obstacles overcome, innovations or discoveries made, and outcomes:

Founded in 1991 as Blue Ocean Software, Numara Software grew quickly to gain
worldwide presence as the makers of Track-It!, the most widely installed help
desk and asset management solution in the world. A key to this rapid market
penetration was the Numara Software sales team, who were extremely successful
with customers needing a full-featured help desk software and asset management
solution that worked right out of the box. With the acquisition of Unipress
Software in late 2006, the team was challenged with adding an entirely new
product line to its portfolio, requiring a shift in the way they approached
the market as well as changes to their sales process.

The flagship Unipress product was FootPrints, a comprehensive service desk
software solution, which targets more complex, and often larger, customers
requiring greater flexibility and customization. Initially, the sales team
implemented similar practices that had been tried and true with Numara Track-
It!, leveraging a core set of materials and product demonstrations to sell to
a wide variety of customers across different industries. After somewhat
limited success at the outset, in FY08 (July 2007-July 2008) Numara Software
launched a new approach to maturing its sales organization, using a more
solution-focused model.

The philosophy centered around a "Content Experts coach Position Excellence"
concept whereby each of the leaders in the sales organization focused on their
core competency and was responsible for a specific functional silo: Field
Sales, Inside Sales, Customer Account Management and Pre-Sales Engineers. The
new approach focused on learning more about prospects up-front and then
tailoring presentations and demonstrations accordingly. The team now takes
the time to not only understand a prospect's basic service desk needs, but
also dive deep into their unique processes and procedures, assess their legacy
environment for integration issues, understand their organizational
environment, and even discover non-IT business functions where Numara
FootPrints may also be able to help. Using this information, the sales
department now presents customized demonstrations, allowing the prospect to
see exactly how the solution will work for their particular situation. This
enables prospects to fully understand information, such as the pay back
timeframe, impact to end-users, organizational ramifications, and how to
further leverage the investment to support other parts of their business.

The implementation of the new process had a dramatic impact on the Numara
Software sales results for the past fiscal year. During FY08, the team
shattered many of the company's sales records, including the highest-selling
final day, month, quarter and year. In addition, the team set a new company
record for the most six-figure deals to happen in one quarter, while also
securing the company's largest order in history. The team also achieved a
record average selling price (ASP) for Numara FootPrints, helping the company
to bring in four times the revenue versus the same period last year. Lastly,
the company set a new customer acquisition (NCA) record, helping to further
Numara Software's position as the most popular service desk provider on the
market.

2. List hyperlinks to any online news stories, press releases, or other documents that support the claims made in the section above. IMPORTANT: Begin each link with http://, and enclose each link in square brackets; for example, [http://www.youraddress.com]:

http://www.numarasoftware.com/pr_ClemsonUniversity.asp

http://www.numarasoftware.com/pdf/case%20studies/FP_CS_RedGold.pdf

http://www.numarasoftware.com/Testimonials_FP.asp

http://www.numarasoftware.com/pr_recordbreakingyear.asp

3. Provide a brief (up to 100 words) biography about the leader(s) of the nominated sales organization:

Chris Ferrante is the Vice President of Sales in the Americas at Numara
Software and is responsible for all of the revenues, channels, and direct
sales within this area. During his seven years at Numara Software, Chris has
played a key role in the company's growth and market strategies, increased
revenues, and has driven new customer acquisition through a sophisticated
sales process. Based on his eighteen years of sales and business development
experience, he has also implemented the notion of targeted account selling
through PACS- Predictable, Accountable, Scalable Actions, which has improved
the company's sales training program and improved results.