Rosetta Stone Gets Fluent in Smarter Selling

Though the name Rosetta Stone is most commonly associated with the retail kiosk selling language-learning CDs in malls and airports, there is much more to the brand's familiar blue-and-yellow box than meets the eye.

Since 1992, the company, formerly known as Fairfield Learning Technologies, has provided a technology-based solution that taps into the power of computer simulation, graphics, and audio—rather than translation techniques—to help users learn a new language.

The company has grown considerably in scope over the years. Rosetta Stone now breaks its business into consumer and institutional units, the latter of which is comprised of education, corporate, and government clients. Currently the consumer unit represents about 75 percent of Rosetta Stone revenue, but institutional growth could level the percentage as more companies look for ways to better serve a global customer base.

Because language-learning technology can span client services and operations to human resources, training, and development, a blurring of the lines can create confusion when it comes to outreach. One of the most challenging tasks Rosetta Stone sales reps were up against was identifying the proper point person in an organization to reach out to in the first place. The company's sales teams had historically relied on information from Hoovers and Jigsaw company and industry information databases, says Charles Frydenborg, senior director of corporate sales in North America.

Rosetta Stone had started to look at how forces such as social media were impacting the sales process, and purchased premium LinkedIn accounts for all of its sales reps to have access to features like In-Mail for better prospect targeting. In the fall of 2011, the sales team began a pilot test of InsideView's Sales Intelligence solution, which could deliver dynamic alerts and information to users about key accounts within their Salesforce.com contact database. A full deployment and expanded access to the tool for field sales reps in late 2012 has made a measurable difference.

"It has made us a much more effective and efficient organization," Frydenborg says. "We spend less time targeting companies that can't and won't buy. Then when we identify the right companies, we are much more effective at getting to our potential buyers quickly. It has been an outstanding tool for prospecting, account management, and for opportunity qualification and generation."

Once a purchaser's contract is in place, InsideView helps sales reps identify additional buying centers. Rosetta Stone discovered that sales reps who had used InsideView Sales Intelligence obtained 22 percent greater lead-to-opportunity conversion rates as a result of better targeting. Win rates went up 12 percent because sales reps had more information about prospect needs during the selling conversation. And, since they were reaching more people within a prospective company, reps saw a 33 percent higher average deal size because of the expanded number of licenses they were able to sell.

InsideView has also helped Rosetta Stone become more strategic in its selling efforts. "The salesperson [now] has to be consultative, and you can only be in a consultative role if you are fully informed about your client, their business, where they're investing their dollars, and where their strategy is headed," Frydenborg says.

Using Sales Intelligence, reps have access to more information about a company, ranging from news outlets to social media and legal filings. If a rep wants specific account alerts, he can trigger notification for business-critical events, such as a management change, as well as see key connections between decision makers in target accounts from within a CRM system.

As a company, offering socially enabled selling tools has become a core part of Rosetta Stone's sales culture and is an important factor in the on-boarding of new reps. "We invest heavily in the sales tools and applications we make available to our sales professionals in order to maximize their effectiveness," Frydenborg remarks. "We are building a world-class sales organization" by taking advantage of the latest tools and technologies.

The Payoff

Using InsideView's Sales Intelligence solution, Rosetta Stone has garnered:

• 22 percent higher lead-to-opportunity conversion rates;
• 33 percent higher average deal sizes; and
• 12 percent higher win rates.

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