Outerbay

PROBLEM STATEMENT

OuterBay is a new IT solution company with a promising and differentiated product, it has not yet built a

strong sales force to communicate the value it delivers to its customers and for that reason has failed to

generate attractive sales. In order to keep building its sales force OuterBay should decide if it should hire

a new VP Sales, Mark Burton, or convince the interim Bruce Wilson to stay.

SITUATION ANALYSIS

The industry for this specific IT solution (Application Data Management) is still relatively small and new

with only two big competitors (Tickmack/Crystalize and Princeton Softech). Initially these two new

competitors helped the industry overall through educating customers about the value of new application

data management technology. At this point, OuterBay has a competitive advantage since it delivers the

most value by supporting applications across the entire enterprise. Consequently, it needs to build its sale

force to increase sales before its competitors catch up and it loses that advantage.

Sam Martin

On the first attempt to hire a VP of Sales to start selling and forming a sales team, Sam Martin was hired

which resulted into a very bad decision for the company since he did not perform the way he was

expected to. From the beginning he did not take the initiative and failed to establish a sales process, which

was a key aspect OuterBay needed in order to train its potential sales people and reduce the sales cycle

without needing Butterfield’s help. Although he appeared to have an attractive resume and fit the profile

The Venture Group and Butterfield had created, these specifications were not enough for someone who

was about to become VP of sales. First, he lacked the same vision or drive the company had, he was just

ready to keep doing what he knows which is sell software, but was not ready for that kind of leadership

position. His attitude was that “we were good at articulating interest” event though we...