Overview

pAltify is the Customer Revenue Optimization (CRO) company. We deliver a unique combination of strategy, methodology and technology to help enterprises like Autodesk, GE, JCI, Tableau and Workday deliver value in every interaction and make everyone part of the revenue team. Our applications and approach help companies win the deals that matter and generate new pipeline and opportunities. I am the CEO of Altify./p

Supernova Award Category

AI and Augmented Humanity

The Problem

pSince Autodesk was founded, its business identity centered on products. As the needs of its sales and revenue teams changed, Autodesk needed to become a ‘customer’ company, driving success with the customer’s needs and goals in mind. Autodesk’s move to become a customer company was one part of a larger company transformation as the organization has transition it’s business model from selling perpetual licenses to a subscription model while moving it’s product portfolio from on-premise to the cloud. This fundamental change in business model for a public company has impacted every part of the Autodesk organization. “Right now, we’re in the middle of the biggest transformation we’ve ever done,” said Adrienne Walker, a senior sales manager at Autodesk, noting the added element of the company building out its subscription model as well. “Along with the flexibility you get from being a subscription company, it also provides some amazing access to data, and helps us guide our customers in how they use our products and how they can be more efficient.” To make this change required Autodesk to completely transform their sales organization and to embrace a new strategy and go-to-market model to focus on customer outcomes and deliver long term success. Autodesk’s goal was to help their customers optimize revenue and outcomes by providing value in every customer interaction./p

The Solution

pCreating and executing on an entirely new sales model with the inclusion of sales methodology is both daunting and time consuming. Not only does it require the right minds at the table – that’s the full senior sales and leadership teams – but it requires buy-in from the full revenue team. “We partner with organizations that have best-in-class insight and knowledge,” Walker said. “It’s the same reason we use the Altify product: we could have built our own, but we’re not the subject matter experts, so why wouldn’t we go with someone who is?” With that, Autodesk decided to change its methodological approach to opportunity management with help from Altify to develop a customer revenue optimization strategy to help them automate their process and methodology to guide sellers and coach the revenue team to drive the right outcomes./p

The results

pA Digital Sales Transformation! The biggest struggle for the revenue team is consistency. This is because one of the toughest challenges for business is making sure notes, information, and any additional details are contained in the CRM. Autodesk focused on consistency and identifying consistency gaps, using Altify’s Customer Revenue Optimization applications to build opportunity and account plans to align to customer needs. With this information included in the CRM, sales leadership can have full visibility of the process. Ultimately, this will provide insights not just for the sales reps, but for the other stakeholders as well. “Transforming a company requires a transformation in sales,” Walker said. “We’ve brought new focus to our mid-market customers and have moved a large portion of field sales organization from territory- and geography-based to a quasi-named account structure.” Autodesk successfully transformed its sales team from focusing strictly on the tactical elements of selling that accompany traditional approaches. Instead, the leadership team shifted to an account-based selling and marketing strategy that allowed the company to provide valuable, customized information to the customer. /p

Metrics

pWith Altify’s help, Autodesk has developed and continues to refine their customer revenue optimization strategy by automating methodology and process and bringing it to life in Salesforce’s CRM to help guide reps and enable team collaboration. Autodesk was able to dig further into the well-known sales velocity equation (# Qualified Opportunities x Deal Value x Win Rate / Length of Sales Cycle), and find the sweet spot for where the extra winnable deals live. /p p /p pAccording to Walker, using Altify’s CRO platform, Autodesk identified the 30 percent of wins that come, more or less automatically, as well as the 30 percent of deals that they either weren’t going to win or weren’t going to chase, which left 40 percent of their targeted deals that were available for wins. Out of this, the revenue teams were able to leverage a re-thinking of the equation to ensure that the deals they chased were not only winnable, but accompanied by a demonstrably higher win rate. The results have been dramatic. /p p /p pWhen the Autodesk team uses an Altify CRO opportunity plan and can answer yes to their critical six qualification questions, they found that win rates improved by nearly 85 percent. With large deals, often there are more people involved. What Autodesk discovered for large deals (those above $1 million dollars) their win rate goes up by 137 percent when they have identified three or more mentors or supporters in the account./p

The Technology

pBuilt natively on the Salesforce platform, Altify’s CRO application helps thousands of salespeople, sales leaders and executives achieve sustained customer revenue optimization and sales success. Altify customers include: Autodesk, Bell Canada, BT, Comcast, GE, Workday, HP Enterprise, Johnson Controls, United Healthcare, Optum, Salesforce, and Western Union Business Services. Find out more/p

Disruptive Factor

pWith Altify’s help, according to Julie Sokley, VP of Sales Operations at Autodesk,  “In our million-dollar-and-up deals without Altify, we're 14.8 percent close rate, with Altify we go to 48 percent. Average deal is over almost $700,000 bigger. This approach works.” /p p /p pAltify’s Craig Sawicki, VP of Sales Excellence, addressed one of the key questions that helped shape Autodesk’s approach to the improved methodology: /p p /p p… What’s the confidence you have in your forecast and what’s the visibility you have into your revenue performance? Are you going to exceed your goals? Some immediately go to dashboards, some go to spreadsheets, some go to sales lists that summarize the opportunities available – we’re always asking if your teams are focused on the deals that really matter, and how are you certain you can win those deals? Most cannot confidently say yes – there is too much subjectivity. Salespeople are out there doing intelligent guessing. /p p /p p“Critical thinking and methodologies to win are the tools we need,” Walker said. “The deals you lose are the ones you shouldn’t have been in in the first place.”/p

Shining Moment

pThroughout Autodesk’s transformation, the driving factor is to focus on the customer to better understand the people and problems in order to deliver vaule and outcomes . The company found ways to incorporate better data and insights into sales process, and, in turn, used Altify’s Customer Revenue Optimization strategy, methodology and applications to create better outcomes, guide the revenue team and to augment the skills of their existing sales reps./p