Building an Effective, Efficient Sales Operation

Canoe Ventures, LLC

Canoe Ventures, a joint venture of the leading cable television operators in America, is in the business of expanding relevant, measurable engagement with television viewers.  It enables national networks with advanced capabilities to define, develop, and scale advanced television solutions.

Challenge:

Canoe Ventures faced the two-fold sales challenge of establishing direct sales relationships with its cable network clients while simultaneously helping them develop third-party sales efforts. Those third party efforts were essential to enabling cable networks to effectively introduce interactive television into the marketplace.  At the same time, Canoe faced the added challenge of ensuring that the sales strategies were synergistic with ongoing market development activities.

Solution:

Canoe enlisted Kevin Corcoran to help them meet these challenges and move toward high performance sales effectiveness. Applying his expertise in sales process design, Kevin laid the groundwork for developing a carefully orchestrated sales strategy.  He used a series of exercises, which illuminated Canoe’s challenges and highlighted the breakdowns in the accompanying processes.

Once team members were on the same page, Kevin led the strategic planning to develop a game plan, and coordinate working groups to address respective challenges.  “Kevin leveraged his skills in developing organizational effectiveness to connect the dots between functional areas across the organization,” said Vicki Lins, Canoe’s Chief Marketing Officer. “This improved communication and collaboration and ensured maximized efficiencies.”

Providing ongoing consultation, Kevin also enabled Canoe to successfully establish a unified approach to sales and a consolidated sales strategy with well-defined sales operation processes and protocols.  Finally, he applied his leadership development and executive coaching skills to strengthen and improve the sales team’s effectiveness.  This coaching helped to effectively address Canoe’s structural and staffing challenges in its sales operations and support functions.

Result:

Ms. Lins summed up Kevin’s contribution. “The impact of Kevin’s work on behalf of Canoe has been significant.  He brought clarity, facilitated communication and applied his deep knowledge of how effective, efficient sales organizations operate to Canoe.  By doing so, he fostered a more focused approach to sales, a better equipped sales team, and more well-planned sales activities.”