Questek innovations is a materials engineering and design company that empowers materials innovators. Founded by Dr Greg Olson, renowned materials scientist and professor at MIT, they have helped companies innovate with materials for over 20 years. Bill Mahoney, a seasoned software executive, was hired to lead the launch of a SaaS platform, ICMD™, that helps companies develop Materials Solutions that accelerate manufacturing products that accelerates revenue/speed and reduces cost. Space X, Blue Origin, Daido Steel, and Aubert & Duval are some of their world-renowned customers.
To make this transition, they engaged Ci2 Advisors to help them develop a deeper understanding of customer needs and related Customer Hero Stories that would inspire new customers.
After the initial group learning about tapping into the power of the subconscious brain with the Ci2 Dynamic Relationship Model, Product Marketing identified key use cases that were relevant to new prospects and customers. Collaborating with sales and services, they converted them into Customer Hero Stories using the CI2 Ai StoryBuilder and posted them in the secure library for shared use and coaching. Sales could provide the initial context of the beginning, struggles and tipping point of the Story while services added what actually changed for the Customer to accelerate materials design and business results. Think Space X designing a new material for their booster rocket to withstand the extreme heat of re-entry and then be reusable. Classic Elon Musk innovation, saving millions of dollars in manufacturing costs while dramatically accelerating speed.
Bill Mahoney gathers the team monthly to practice using these stories in the right sales and service situations to accelerate new sales wins, develop upsell opportunities by services teams and insure renewals. In the June 5th meeting, John Geraci, was excited to hear about the value of the AiStorybuilder in helping them apply Stories for business results. They demonstrated use of the prospect Story function for analyzing prospects and the Executive Story function to develop and practice executive conversations. These are two areas where sales and services teams often miss the mark with their customers causing delays, lost sales and missed upsell opportunities. The application of StoryTelling and Story Listening with the AI StoryBuilder empowered significant improvement in individuals who are disciplined to practice and rehearse.
Jeff commented,” I have been using the prospect story function to help me think about and analyze my prospects. Responding to the Ai StoryBuilder helped me do this better than anything I have used to date, and the scoring model provided insights to the GAPS in information I needed to uncover to win.”
Daryl- I built an Executive Story to tell. The tool helped me think through how to tell this story to the VP of manufacturing vs the engineers we usually talk to. I also used the Story Coaching function which showed me that even after building this Story, I was not really effective at telling it in a compelling way to this VP. After the 3rd practice and advice from the AI, I got remarkably better, “nailing the delivery.” I feel much more confident in my ability to not only make this call but get action to close the sale.”
Congratulations Team Questek and Bill for this innovative use case of Ci2 solutions. We believe that it will become the norm,” product management/marketing stories, to sales/presales stories to services additions on real value add metrics.”
If helping your teams increase productivity for better business results is important to you please check out our open workshop schedule here: https://ci2advisors.com/
