About
International Focused Growth
Facilitating the adoption of new and innovative software solutions in Telecoms, Enterprise, Mobile and Digital Operators in Europe.
What does IFG do?
IFG Consulting provides comprehensive outsourced business development and sales to reduce the sales cycle, accelerate time-to-market and bring forward your return on investment.
Spanning more than 25 years selling solutions to the telecoms and mobile industry, you’ll benefit from our proven best practice sales methodology and contact network which enables us to quickly identify sales opportunities and manage them through to a successful outcome.
Our flexible approach and Europe-wide coverage with offices in the UK and Germany gives us the unique ability to offer a tailored sales representation solution to meet your needs, both in terms of geographical spread and intensity of activity.
Why not build an in-house sales team?
This is, of course, a valid option, but the question is whether this is where the company should be spending this much of its limited resources at high risk. Here is an example of what it might cost in-house just starting with one sales resource:
Senior Sales with Management 10 years + (Germany or UK)
Description |
Time |
€ |
Salary |
85,000 |
|
Time to hire |
<6 months |
|
Head-hunter 25% of first year salary |
21,250 |
|
Annual Overhead 20% |
17,000 |
|
First qualified opportunities |
<12 months |
|
First year costs total |
123,250 |
This means you will be spending around €125,000 in year 1 with the hope of having some qualified leads after 12 months and need to hire additional resources to support them.
Why is IFG’s Rapid Engagement package an easy starting point?
We normally advise starting with a Rapid Engagement package which is time bound, normally delivered over 2- 3 months and costing a fraction of the costs mentioned in the previous section. We agree a joint list of about 20 target customers and IFG Consulting aim to have engaged with 75% of this list within this period and expect 20% of the list to become qualified leads. This is underpinned by a win/win commercial model which compensates for the effort and incentivises both to succeed together.
As you can see, we will be hitting the road running from the start and all the engagements and leads will be transparent to our client and relevant feedback is shared as appropriate.
Critical Success Factors
What is the profile of an ideal IFG Consulting client?
A typical IFG Consulting client has a software solution which they have sold to one or more customers and are now looking to scale and succeed further afield. They understand that Telecoms knowledge and experience are critical in gaining trust with prospective customers who are looking for a solution to a specific problem. They are likely to be expanding business development and sales capability seeking a competent partner who can help develop their potential.
Knowing your market
You need to know your market. Ideally this means being able to understand where your software fits in the market, your position related to other providers and what makes you stand out with your USP. Helping you home in on this is part of the feedback process and part of our service.
Well-defined value proposition
Without a clear value proposition, you don’t have a business case and, therefore, access to funds will be challenging. Particularly with networks, it is difficult to correlate network functions or elements with individual end-user usage or charges. This might look different on a case-by-case basis which is a challenge we look forward to overcoming with you.
Digital presence
The era of Digital Marketing and Sales is upon us. Having an integrated sales and marketing plan and digital presence is a necessity.
As never before the customer and the vendor both have access to information about each other before actually engaging. This means, as part of your pre-sales activities, you need to have digital content and points of engagement to address the thirst for information. We would welcome the opportunity to help bring this to life and discuss this within the context of the IFG Consulting Rapid Engagement package.
References
In a lot of cases the prospects we will be speaking to might not know of you. Creditable references help to build trust. Without trust you cannot persuade customers to buy making it a key factor for success in the buying process.
Open Communication and Adaptability
One of the advantages of using an external agency such as IFG Consulting is that you also receive information about the way the proposition is being received and improvements that can be made to the go-to-market strategy. We have a wealth of experience and this is one part our service our clients particularly value. Both parties are aligned to succeed together and insights and feedback from prospects and customers are the true proof that you are on the right track.
European Telecoms fragmentation is unique
The European market is unique in the fact it is fragmented with more than 45 countries, each with their own regulator, over 100 mobile operators and – according to some sources – more than 300 MVNOs serving a market of more than 700 million people.
Instead of trying to address each market directly, the better approach is to work with a company which has the contacts to help you succeed. That is where IFG Consulting Europe comes in.