Welcome to the future of business technology, and the future of business technology results.

The economic situation has set the stage for a remarkable opportunity.  StreetSmarts, Inc. is a software company with a product in market for over the past 5 years.  In that time we have developed an approach that enables companies to improve their sales and lower their operating costs in less than 90 days.  This summer, we’re running a contest to prove that businesses of any size or industry can boost their sales results—just by better leveraging the resources they already have.

Here’s the gist: The StreetSmarts Grand Prix will select 3 to 5 companies to compete in a race to see who can improve their sales results the most over a 3 month period.  The participants will receive free implementation of our StreetSmarts software, training,  and donated time from industry experts throughout the 90 days.

Participating companies will be measured on percent improvement in the following sales metrics:
•    Cross Selling and Up Selling – The ability to increase the average transaction size by increasing number of products/services at point of sale
•    Farming Existing Accounts – The ability to increase total contract value of existing customer accounts
•    Competitive Win Rates – The ability to increase number of transactions closed in competitive bidding scenarios
•    Improved Response Rate – The ability to reduce response time to questions from sales or reseller channels
•    Sharing Best Practices – Tracking and rating the effectiveness of best practices applied to distributed sales force
•    Adoption Rates – The percentage of the work force that uses the StreetSmarts solution during the contest period

And as with any good—not to mention legitimate—competition, an objective third party is needed to moderate the process and declare the winner.  For the StreetSmarts Grand Prix, that role will be filled by respected analyst firm CSO Insights, a research firm that benchmarks trends and best practices of sales and marketing organizations. All participating companies will be honored at a special award ceremony in late October.  Although one participant will be deemed the program winner, how can any company “lose” if their sales metrics are improved over 90 days against each of these areas?

We’ll be documenting the program throughout the summer right here at the Tribal Knowledge blog.  Check back in regularly for industry analysis, thought leadership outlook, and contest updates as we continue to rev up and put the program in drive.

So who will improve their sales bottom line the most in the summer of 2009?

Ladies and gentleman, it’s time to start your engines—we’ll see you at the finish line.

Photo by ThatGuyFromDeVryeet