Open Solutions testimonial transcript

I'm Ed Beale, until recently the CEO of Open Solutions who, with the help of Vicki and her magnificent team at Straightahead, were recently sold.

The outcome I have to say it seemed impossible and implausible just two years ago when we first started working with them.

I started at Open Solutions nearly five years ago and our first priority was really to get the business processes and the product improved, and we did that and did it quickly but no matter how hard we tried we just couldn't seem to make any progress with our sales pipeline. We just couldn't generate the quality of sales leads we needed and, as a consequence, our sales performance continued to really disappoint.

So I did some thinking and I got in touch with Vicki and I've known Vicki Culverhouse now for nearly twenty years and we've worked together a lot over that time and one thing you could always rely on and depend with Vicki is that she delivers what she says she's going to do.

So we met up and we sat down together and we talked about what we needed, what our problems were, and together we created a plan.

Now we wanted Straightahead to focus very much on new markets and new opportunities for us, particularly the rugby market because we did sports software and they did that magnificently and we worked really closely with the team there and the benefits for us of working with someone like Straightahead were enormous because not only did we start to see qualified sales leads coming in on a weekly/monthly basis but they also managed our whole telemarketing process for us so they literally managed the conversations with hundreds of our prospective clients, which was fantastic. They effectively became a part of the business, our telemarketing department if you like.

It took a little time to get momentum going, I can't say it just happened straightaway, but after about six months we'd started to generate some really, really good leads together and leads that we were capable of going out and actually completing and closing and that meant in turn that we started to hit our sales targets, our sales budgets, and the rest is history because that was the final part of the jigsaw we needed to create a successful business.

So thank you Straightahead and if you're watching this video I urge you to go and speak with Straightahead about your telemarketing requirements. They're a great company to work with. Thank you.