The Challenge
Selling IT solutions to public-sector customers is unlike any other sales motion. It’s transactional, tied to public-sector buying periods, and full of nuances around pricing and contracting that general sales training simply doesn’t cover. For one Top 50 solutions provider, that mismatch was creating a costly problem for its public-sector team.
The company’s internal training program wasn’t built for the public sector, which required selling to both the Federal and SLED markets. New hires without IT sales experience were struggling to succeed. More than 50% of these reps left within their first year, while a startling 70% left within two years. The team needed two things at once: a better way to find quality entry-level IT sales talent, and a training approach that would actually prepare those hires for the realities of public-sector selling. Without change, the cycle of hiring and losing salespeople, and the associated recruitment costs, lost productivity, and disrupted customer relationships that come with it, would continue.
The Solution
This organization started with a pilot, then expanded the partnership across two fronts:
- Smarter hiring. Strategic recruiting focused on recent college graduates who have demonstrated a competitive spirit by participating in college team sports and other related extracurricular activities, and candidates with up to two years of applicable sales experience, screened for the soft skills that predict success in IT sales: grit, perseverance through rejection, and strong auditory comprehension skills.
- Training built for IT sales. And for the Public Sector. A personalized curriculum grounded in IT fundamentals, ensuring reps understood the technology and the ecosystem before they ever tried to sell it. The IT Fundamentals and Advanced IT learning paths were customized to the team’s needs and always taught from the buyer’s perspective. Including the unique buying personas of state and local government customers. Content stayed fresh and current with the fast-moving tech landscape, keeping every lesson established in the real world.
The result was a structure their public-sector team never had before: a clear breakdown of the channel, the sales cycle, and how the ecosystem fits together, giving new hires the best possible baseline from day one.
The Results
- Improved retention. New hires who previously left within a year are now staying beyond the one-year mark. Over 75% of FastStartGO!-trained reps remained with the organization beyond one year.
- Higher-quality candidates. Strategic recruiting and soft-skills screening raised the bar on entry-level hires. FastStartGO!-trained reps achieved an aggregate quota performance greater than 100%, including both product and managed services sales.
- As a result of the comprehensive Advanced IT Solutions for Sellers program, our client saw a 30% increase in higher-margin managed services sales, which included 365 and managed cybersecurity services.
What began as a demand-generation engagement has grown into a multi-year partnership spanning recruiting and IT sales training, a sign of the FastStartGO! value to the organization.