CDW and Communispace: Listening to Create a Customer-Centric Sales Strategy

By CDW and Communispace

CDW is a leading provider of technology solutions for business, government, and education. Since 2004, CDW has had the voice of its corporate customers at its fingertips through three private communities of approximately 300 members each, built and managed by Communispace. Community members are influencers and/or makers of technology purchasing decisions who are eager to learn from their peers, and have a voice in shaping the policies, products, and services offered by CDW.

CDW continuously taps members of its private online communities for all kinds of indispensible advice on its products and services, marketing ideas, and innovation. The communities also have inspired new approaches to sales both in terms of generating leads and relationship building with prospects early in the sales process.

The work of the communities have had a strong impact on CDW’s sales process—from helping to improve the “cold call” experience, to creating best practices for prospect outreach. Members even wrote sales “pitches” for CDW to demonstrate what they felt would be most valuable for a new customer to hear. By giving CDW insight into how they experience early sales outreach efforts, members provided concrete ways to help build a strong relationship with them, right from the start.

This new approach has become part of sales training at CDW’s Sales Academy. New Account Managers using these best practices have been more successful in bringing in new customers than other sources such as CDW.com. This is especially important considering that new customers brought in by Account Managers are about four times more valuable than customers from other sources. By listening to their customer communities, CDW was able to create a more personalized approach to sales, driving average customer value 17% higher than the previous year, before these best practices were implemented.

March 2004 to present

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