AKAMAI TECHNOLOGIES

Overview:

Headquartered in Cambridge, MA, Akamai is The Business Internet, the world's largest on demand distributed computing platform for conducting profitable e-business. While the public Internet does not adapt to meet the increasingly sophisticated requirements that companies place on it, Akamai's underlying technology does. Their technology and services enable companies to overcome the limitations and vulnerabilities of the public Internet, enabling them to unleash the revenue opportunities e-business offers without the expense or headache of complicated infrastructure, lengthy implementations and sleepless nights wondering if it will all work. Akamai enables e-business for over 1,000 enterprises and government agencies. Whether it's delivering the Internet's largest ever streaming event, enabling huge numbers of software downloads, or supporting holiday traffic for leading Internet retailers, Akamai provides unparalleled global reach and cost-effective, on demand scaling.

Advance the Sales Cycle!

Early in 2004, Akamai was facing some major challenges in their market space. Due to new competition from a low-cost competitor, they determined that they needed significant changes in sales strategies. In order to be successful, Akamai's sales force needed to clearly demonstrate the value of their products at the earliest point of contact. Furthermore, they needed to develop new negotiation skills so that this low-cost competitor would be unable to compete purely on price. With Basho Five: "Bargain to Advance," Akamai's sales reps learned how to effectively transfer ownership to the prospect, creating the most favorable environment for negotiations while giving them complete control over the negotiation process. They learned how to identify their coach, sponsor and champion within the organization and how to create a customized negotiation strategy that would quickly advance their sales process toward closure.

Additionally, Akamai's sales reps wanted to learn sales techniques that would enable them to gain rapport. They knew that early rapport-building over the phone would bring them more appointments and qualified meetings, thus paving the way for them to clearly define their value proposition while setting the stage for effective negotiations. With Basho Three: "The Winning Call," their reps learned phone sales techniques to immediately gain interest and curiosity over the phone by leveraging a personalized elevator pitch. Most importantly, they learned what to say in that first call, as well as what NOT to say.

These new sales skills and sales techniques had to be enforced within the framework of their pre-defined sales process without being intrusive to their existing pipeline management system. Within these requirements, Basho Strategies created a program that was focused on the specific sales skills and strategies that would enable the Akamai sales team to succeed at these goals.