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Scenario for Target Account Selling

This scenario provides an example of the business process performed by a sales manager using the Target Account Selling (TAS) methodology. Your company may follow a different process according to its business requirements.

A sales representative meets with a customer and discovers a new opportunity. The sales representative plans to use the Target Account Selling (TAS) methodology from Siebel MultiChannel Services (MCS) to develop a sales strategy for this new deal. TAS is supported by her Siebel Sales application, allowing the sales representative to analyze the opportunity and its multiple decision makers.

Opportunity Assessment

The sales representative selects the opportunity within Siebel Sales, and navigates to the Target Account Selling views to begin the process. She sees several views that she can use to profile and assess the opportunity, develop her value proposition and competitive strategy, and create a detailed action plan to achieve her goals.

She begins by developing an overview of the opportunity. She enters some high-level information, including a profile of the account and the opportunity. This information provides strategic insight that her sales team can use and helps her to connect the project to the customer's business drivers. The sales representative also enters details about her goal for the opportunity, the solution she is offering, and the business value this solution provides. She continues by entering a description of the compelling event that is causing the customer to act. This helps her to determine the customer's sense of urgency to close the deal. She concludes by summarizing her high-level strengths and weaknesses for the deal.

Now that she has a general overview of the opportunity, she begins to assess her position using the TAS criteria that Siebel MCS has developed from analyzing the best practices of top sales professionals. She also rates the position of her key competitors using these criteria. She uses the TAS Coach on the Assessments screen to help her complete the assessment. The assessment helps her qualify the opportunity and understand her company's position in the deal.

Competitive and Relationship Strategy Development

Next, the sales representative begins to analyze her competitors for the opportunity and to determine what strategy she should use to win the deal. She uses the TAS Coach, available from the Competitive Analysis screen, for competitive strategy recommendations.

She continues by analyzing the prospect's organization. She maps both the formal and informal structures so that she can be sure she is spending time with the right contacts. When she completes the analysis, she views the organizational chart that summarizes her assessment and identifies key players and relationships she can use to close the deal.

Now that she knows who to talk to, the sales representative begins to develop a relationship strategy. She enters the business and personal agenda, as well as key decision issues, for each contact. This preparation helps her to determine what message to deliver to each contact.

Strategy Execution

The sales representative is now prepared to develop her action plan to win the opportunity. First, she navigates to the Customer Milestones view to document key events or milestones in the customer's buying process. This view helps her plan the activities that she and her sales team should take to address the customer's requirements at each milestone. Then, she enters key action steps and resources needed and assigns the actions to members of her sales team. She can choose to have the activities appear in her calendar, activities, or to-do list, or in those of another assignee. She navigates to the PRIME Activities view where she can see all the activities she created to meet customer milestones, as well as add action items required to win the deal. She also makes some additional notes about the opportunity and makes the notes available for the entire team to view.

The sales representative's manager requests a copy of the TAS Opportunity Plan. The sales representative configures the report to display relevant sections of the Opportunity Plan, generates the report, and then emails it to her manager.