Challenge

As the virtualization market matured, VMware wished to elevate their leadership position from virtualization to strategic vendor in cloud computing, offering a wide variety of solutions. This shift called for the re-orientation of its field sales and channel organizations to sell higher in customer organizations to a broader spectrum of buyers where they would encounter different set of competitors. They needed intelligence about their new targets and business-level conversations to open up cloud opportunities with IT executives and business leaders.

Solution

Firebrick created a set of Fight Plan sales enablement tools to help VMware’s field and channel organization identify sales scenarios, engage new buyers and combat new competitive pressures. These brief message guides provided buyer-centric sales conversations, and delivered them in easily digested role-based packages to optimize selling efforts across its various product lines.

Result

• Of the 1,200 sales tools and documents available on the VMware sales portal, Fight Plans accounted for 6 of the top 10
• Achieved 40% CAGR during 2-year engagement with Firebrick, holding gross margins and operating margins steadily high and above industry norms
• Accelerated sales effectiveness, particularly with new buyers, to become pre-eminent cloud computing vendor