Building the Foundation and Vision of the Future

We were meeting with Mike Dickerson at his office in Atlanta early in the summer of 2012, and Mike had just taken on a leadership role for PGi’s Global Collaboration Services. Mike was describing his vision for PGi: a transformation from a provider of dial-up conferencing services—which have increasingly become a commodity with an intense focus on price—to a software and solutions business focused on helping companies create more value through enhanced collaboration. Mike’s and the executive team’s vision was to implement this business transformation with new sales and go-to-market capabilities that would be tested with PGi’s diamond accounts, their largest global customers. Mike described the need for a new way to engage with these customers; it would require more collaboration and consultation overall as well as function-specific insights on how collaboration can drive results. He also spoke of the internal capabilities needed to support this new level of customer engagement. These capabilities included a new account planning approach, standard sales and opportunity processes, and better resource alignment at an account level. Leveraging his background as both an entrepreneur and sales executive, Mike was able to describe his vision for what needed to change, why it needed to change, and why it needed to change now—all components of a solid vision for sales transformation.