Overview
Headquarters: Indianapolis, IN
Insight Investment: $10.5 million in July, 2004
Current Status: Portfolio company

Business Description
ExactTarget delivers on-demand email software solutions for permission-based email marketing. The Home Depot, Scotts, Churchill Downs, Encyclopedia Britannica, and more than 5,000 organizations worldwide rely on ExactTarget email solutions to strengthen their customer relationships and to control email throughout the enterprise.

Challenge
As it expanded its sales force, ExactTarget’s sales productivity was declining. There was strong evidence to suggest that this was the result of a sales process that was adequate for the early stages of growth of the company but insufficient as Exact Target grew beyond 4,000 customers.

Solution
Insight engaged to identify opportunities to alleviate the bottlenecks and streamline sales process and effectiveness.
Some of the key recommendations:
• Re-focus sales force on core set of activities (prospect meetings, preparation, and negotiation) at the expense of non-core activities (lead generation, lead qualification and post-close activities). Divert non-core sales activities to appropriate groups (e.g., marketing, pre-sales, sales support)
• Invest in improving quality of leads: create lead qualification group with strict rules around how incoming leads should be triaged, provide more training on seeking referrals, encourage field reps to pass leads to sales development for help with sorting and qualifying
• Create a specialized “strategic sales” group to target larger deals
• Adjust compensation structure balance time spent on new vs. existing customers

After the implementing Insight recommendations, sales representatives experienced higher conversion rates and more maintained more contacts per rep. Productivity greatly increased: bookings per rep more than doubled over the course of the coming year, and have maintained record levels since.