Sales Partnerships, Inc., Broomfield, CO, United States: Large Scale Financial Field Sales Driving Success by Focusing on Reluctant Acceptors

Written answers to the questions

Sales Partnerships' nomination for field sales team of the year focuses on work done in merchant activation and acquisition/financial services in 2022.

We operated in more than 40 states face-to-face selling to hundreds of thousands of small brick and mortar businesses with a team of more than 150 representatives. Our performance during this period was more than 10% better than the period in which we won our prior gold Stevie award for top Sales Outsourcing Provider and top Field Sales Organization despite challenges detailed below. 

With many organizations trying to replace field sales with telesales and marketing channels with mixed success, Sales Partnerships took advantage of that market opportunity to capitalize on where field sales is essential. Our program not only out-performed every competitor (including other Stevie nominees) but did so in safe and socially responsible ways.

What makes this achievement even more impressive is it was done with 60% of the work being a strategic focus to win accounts who said no to other channels recently. It required finesse in building relationships and even more focus on selling value. Our core emphasis was in helping merchants better understand hidden demographics that they were missing and leveraging our work in the community with a more diverse sales force than competing channels. The demographic tools we developed demonstrated spending behaviors for individuals in their neighborhoods including with other companies in the merchant's specialty. The community work ranged from volunteering time from our teams to integrating our support for veterans, anti-racism, and support of the LGBTQ community into the sales. Diversity also played an important role in our success. Field sales, according to the US Department of Labor 2021, is 79.8% white - one of the least diverse professions. SPI’s work over the past decade to better mirror the national populace resulted in our diversity mirroring the US overall - making us twice as diverse as the industry average. That diversity pays dividends in having teams that better understand and reflect their communities. Those relationships help drive sales.

Please see attached supporting materials and case studies.

Thank you for your time and consideration of our nomination.

Total 190 words used.

Sales Partnerships (SPI) is an 8-time prior Stevie winner in the top Field Sales Category, specializing in face-to-face selling environments while representing the brands of some of the largest and most respected companies in the world through turnkey sales outsourcing. Our client roster includes notables such as Google, IBM, US Bank, Verizon, and Dow Chemical. 

Sales Outsourcing means providing cradle-to-grave sales services under the brand of each of the clients represented. Our teams are recruited for and dedicated to just an individual client based on that client program’s requirements.

Our hallmark is using and inventing systems and processes that optimize all the important areas impacting sales: recruiting, diversity, technology, training, management, analytics, and strategy. We’ve won dozens of global awards (including Field Sales Team of the Year eight times), been recognized in national media (Selling Power, Sales and Marketing Management Magazine, Inc. Magazine, CNNMoney, etc.), and helped establish the standard for providing field based sales outsourcing services. Since 1997, we have generated more than $10B in gross profits for our clients. SPI historically has operated in every significant MSA in the United States as well as in select markets globally.

Total 208 words used.

SPI went to market with more than 150 field reps representing every significant MSA in the US. Building large teams as part of market re-entry after Covid closures presented substantial challenges. We had to be live within 60 days in each market and ramp to normal production no slower than pre-Covid. This has to be done during the most challenging recruiting environment for field sales personnel since the 1940’s. We also had to do so while keeping an eye to staff and customer safety.

We hit 105% of revenue and activation goals. These results were impressive considering the market challenges and the industry production figures (discussed in the next section.) We did so with the majority of our target merchants having already been worked by other channels and having declined to be active customers. That was a strategic priority for the client to capture these segments despite the increased difficulty. The result was more than $100M in gross profit revenue for our client from SPI’s work.

Among the hundreds of sales channels used by this Fortune 100 client - SPI's work was the top overall producer despite working more than half of our prospects from the rejection lists.

Please see attached case studies and documentation for more details.

Total 101 words used.

The following attachments and links are included to support our nomination:

● Case study detailing the field work performed for the nomination

● “SPI Gives” summary document describing the volunteering efforts referenced in the nomination (helped both with retention and deepening community engagement)

● Documentation on SPI’s Territory Management Suite referenced in the nomination

● Documentation on SPI’s Metric Based Recruiting Systems

● Documentation on SPI’s Diversity and Inclusion Work

● Link to the SPI homepage for more information about our organization

Thank you again for your time and consideration for Sales Partnerships for the Top Field Sales Team in America.

Total 247 words used.

We achieved 105% of annual goals (measured in revenue and activation – our two primary metrics) despite not being green lit for targets until April 2022. Our results were the highest results of any of the clients' channel in North America. The 2022 goals had no quota relief despite market relaunches. By comparison, through the hundreds of internal sales teams that client fields – the average team missed goal by more than 30% in the understandably difficult environment. Only 15% of sales teams came within 20% of target overall.

SPI generated more than $100M in gross profit revenue for our client from SPI’s work. Most impressively, we did it while working rejection lists where 60% of our target merchants had recently rejected the client.

The attached case study and supporting documentation provide important detail on how we succeeded where other entities struggled.

One of our client senior VP's said it best:

“2021 and 2022 were the most difficult year for us in my 10+ years here. Even with the epidemic, the goals had to remain firm. Sales Partnerships stepped up to it tremendously. Despite market challenges, they kept rolling with it and beat the numbers. The field team is more than solid but this time, we got to see an often-unseen part of their solution shine – their support and technology teams. Nothing phased SPI. They make the nearly impossible look routine. We highly value their partnership.” - Client Liaison, Fortune 500 Credit Card Services Provider