I recently had my semi-annual coaching session with the CEO of one of my favorite clients. What a great year his company had!

They are in the IT services space. Sixty percent of their revenue is realized through recurring contracted services; the balance is from project work. They do a lot of things right, but last year they committed to do three new things and do them with focus and rigor.

Account Managers would regularly ask for referrals.

• Referrals within the account so they might spread their relationship network.

• Referrals to identify great people that might be a fit in their company.

• Referrals to executives in other companies where there might also be a fit for their offerings.

• They reported weekly on how many referrals were requested and how many were fulfilled.

Opportunity landscape analysis.

• Account Managers built a map for each existing customer.
• What parts of their service offering were in place and where was the white space?
• What made sense to explore?
• They reported on cross-selling opportunities.

Value-priced projects.

• They moved from time-and-materials pricing to value pricing.
• They put better project management focus in place.
• They involved the account managers in the proposals and project management process.

Given these three initiatives, with metrics in place, what were the results?

• Annualized run rate on the top line increased by 65%.  Holy smokes!

• 67% of new business (new logos) came from referrals.

• 59% of cross-sell opportunities closed.

• Project revenue margins significantly improved.

• Account managers made 40% more in performance incentives.

The secret sauce?

• Training.

• Coaching.

• Measurement and reporting.