Prospecting and Lead Generation for LSPs

A distinguished career in the translation industry coupled with the acute selling skills gained in our Prospecting and Lead Generation programme helped Elizabeth Gomez position her company in a new vertical market, protect it from incumbents and double its turnover.

Elizabeth Gomez has worked in the translation industry for more than 30 years, with much of her career spent in senior positions on the operations side of the industry. Since 2015 she has been the Vice-President of ACCU Solutions, a Canadian based translation agency specialising in technical publications translation.

Like many firms in the translation industry, ACCU Solutions was experiencing a challenging period, with longstanding customers migrating to cheaper suppliers and turning to ACCU only for the most important and complex material. In order to future-proof the company against this trend, the strategic decision was made to focus on more lucrative, vertical markets, one of which was defence.

Elizabeth was tasked with generating leads in this new space. This presented a unique challenge in her career; for all her experience and knowledge of the industry, direct selling and lead generation were not activities she had undertaken to any great extent in previous roles.  

Recognising the need to up-skill to meet the challenge of winning business in a new target market, she joined the Prospecting and Lead Generation for LSPs course in 2017.

The principles from the course, along with Elizabeth’s comprehensive understanding of the translation industry proved a powerful combination. Following the course, she quickly made a significant amount of progress in this new market, with some key achievements being:

• Established relationships with key, senior stakeholders in the target organisations.
• Created and sold new service offerings tailored to the needs of the organisations she had built relationships with.
• Won translation contracts from major players in the defence industry, replacing long-established suppliers.

As a result of the new contracts Elizabeth was able to win, ACCU Solutions’ turnover doubled in less than two years.

Elizabeth’s previous experience and knowledge of the translation industry were undoubtedly a huge factor in this rapid success. However, a few key principles from the training allowed her to channel this expertise to win these key contracts. Some of the many things Elizabeth did exactly right included:

• She positioned herself perfectly, attending events where she could connect in person with key decision makers. She even became president of a women’s association within the defence industry, which put her in touch with senior executives.
• She used questioning techniques to generate productive conversations and listened actively to the responses she was given. Specifically, she listened for problems and adjusted her company’s offerings to meet these needs, partnering with other firms where they could not provide the service themselves.
• She developed ACCU’s role within their clients’ companies, helping them learn more about their clients’ needs too, and to provide solutions. (In one instance a solution she devised helped her client increase their revenue by 60%).

Elizabeth’s approach exemplifies what we refer to as ‘new selling’ – finding ways to develop longstanding relationships with clients, learning their problems and looking for ways to help solve them, rather than simply reciting benefits of your product or service. The questioning techniques, the methods for uncovering latent needs and the strategies for keeping sales conversations going covered in the Fluent Sales training all played their part in helping ACCU Solutions position themselves for future success at a challenging time for the translation industry.

To find out more about the Prospecting and Lead Generation for LSPs, or any of the other Fluent Sales courses, click here.