Siebel System: Anatomy of Sales.

Understanding the business

 Founded in 1993 to address the growing need of organization of all sizes to acquire, retain and better
serve the customers.
 Revenue of $2 Billion with 8000 Employees
 World leader in the software for CRM with 50 % market share Fastest growing application software
company in history Pioneers of Employee relationship management systems
 More than 200 Products with 139 direct sales offices in 40 countries around the world
Dilemma
 Gregg Carman job was to serve financial services clients in the New England region FleetBoston, largest
client of Siebel which is 9th largest financial bank in United States
 FleetBoston acquired the discount stockbroker
 Quick & Reilly Carman was negotiating a deal of $ 2.1 million sales to Quick & Reilly After it is acquired
by FleetBoston, the difficult situation on part of Gregg Carman was whether to stand by Quick & Reilly
or bow to FleetBoston’s Wishes
Founding Siebel System
 Tom Siebel articulated two goals: 1. to build a high-technology company focused entirely on customer
satisfaction, and build a company with enduring value. 2. Company’s vision is going out to customer
and spoke to potential customers and understand their needs before building them products they
talked to Cisco, sun, Clorox, Unisys.
 By 2001 Siebel assessed that there had been a significant change in the way firms thought about
software decisions.
 Independent research studies founded that Siebel’s customers achieved a return on their CRM
investment within 9.6 months. Further, these customers achieved: 1)an increased of over 20% in their
customers satisfaction levels, 2)an increased of over 19% in their employees productivity levels, 3)an
increase of 16% in customer retention.
 Partnership were crucial to Siebel Systems go-to-market strategy. Unlike its competitors, Siebel
Systems did not attempt to capture value from all components of a CRM implementation –that is,
implementation services, hardware, and software– but rather from only the software component.
 By August 2001 Siebel System had 729 partners classified and resourced by go-to-market importance.
because a large proportion of the success of a client’s software implementation was contingent on the
performance of a alliance partners, sales had to work closely with the alliance organizations during and
after the sales process to achieve 100% customer satisfaction.
Tom Siebel’s core value
o CUSTOMER SATISFACTION
o PROFESSIONALISM
o PROFESSIONAL COURTESY
o BIAS FOR ACTION
Carmen approach to selling

 BUYING CENTRE THE PROJECT TEAM

SENIOR MANAGEMENT
 Carman referred to the project team as “my coach” and for the senior management , “my executive
manager”
 Carman's spokes about the methodologies cannot make a salesperson out of someone off the street
but they can make a good sales person much more effective
POWER OF METHODOLOGIES
o BY FORCING YOU TO ANSWER A NUMBER OF QUESTIONS ABOUT THE CUSTOMER
o NOT MISSING ANY IMPORTANT INFORMATION THAT COULD POTENTIALLY AFFECT THE SALE
 Sibel system meets quick & reilly

 Two people from Quick & Reilly approached the booth of Siebel System as Siebel System are going to
talk about merger with the Quick & Reilly.
 Carman had two options – 1. Formed the impression that she was a knowledgeable customer who
understands the complexity. 2. He was not comfortable directly comparing his firm & a competitor
until he knew the client well.

How should Carman respond to the invitation to tell the Quick and Reilly executives what he thought
of Oracle?
 Carman response was appropriate as he has not introduced the client to his product, hence comparing
it already with a competitor known to customer might not give good image about Siebel systems
 By suggesting Catty to look for Oracle, Carman is not just trying to sell his product instead helping
customer to find the right solution for their problem.

What feature of this particular interaction influence your opinion?

 Cathy had no prior knowledge of the Siebel Systems.
 Oracle is one of the Siebel’s leading competitors and a bigger brand.

Should he ask for Budget? Should he ask directly or should he suppress his curiosity and leave it to the
prospect to bring up information about the size and timing of the opportunity?
 Carman should ask for the budget and the number of users of the -system because this information is
pre-requisite for processing the deal further and by asking specific questions would help Carman in
evaluating requirements and needs of customers in better way that would help him in explaining the
product accordingly, thus increasing the chances of making the deal

If he asks for information, how will he use it?

 Siebel’s superiority over competitors’ products
 Right product specification for customer and suggestions about customization

Evaluate Carman’s interaction with the customer up to this point. Is he doing a good job?
 Caravan tried to gather information from Cathy to get their requirement and also gave demo of Siebel
Systems as to give broad ideas of what they are capable of delivering

How effective Seibel System’s approach?

 Siebel system approach is effective to large extent as it considers customers to be on top and focuses
on delivering complete solution to them with customization as required, they not only concentrate on
the sale of the software, however they work with customer in implementation and use of the solution
and ensure that customer derives the benefit out of the system
Learning Outcomes
 Always focus on customer’s need and requirement accordingly provide him with the solutions Never
lose control over conversation with customer while talking about competitors

Goal- to give broad idea of what they are delivering

Assets-