International Checkout, Inc., of Santa Monica, California, won the Stevie Award for Most Innovative Company of the Year (up to 100 employees) in the 2008 Stevie Awards for Women in Business, and CEO Saskia Strick won the Stevie for Executive of the Year in a Service Industry in the 2009 American Business Awards.

Former fashion model Saskia Strick was recently recognized by The American Business Awards for single-handedly creating a business model unlike any that had existed before. 

The company that she formed in 2002, International Checkout, Inc., provides an innovative solution that enables retailers to tap into the billions of dollars spent online by international consumers each year with no associated risks or difficulties. International Checkout assumes all fraud risk, guaranteeing payment to its retail partners in US dollars. For the consumer, it means a straightforward payment and fulfillment services, and a world-class multi-lingual customer service.

Accepting the Stevie Award in New York in June, Strick said: “I am extremely honored to receive this recognition from the American Business Awards and its judges—but I couldn’t have done it without the support of my extraordinary staff, our U.S. merchant partners, and our loyal customers around the globe.”

Satisfied Customers—and Retailers
From its facility in Santa Monica, California, International Checkout provides a turnkey integrated solution that includes a full range of services for retailers and consumers. Merchants are able to open their sites to the rapidly growing world market within a few short hours of becoming a partner. Consumers worldwide can now browse and add items to the shopping cart directly on the merchant’s website. With the click of an “International Checkout” button, the contents of the cart are seamlessly transferred to the AJAX-driven single-page checkout for the fastest, easiest level of performance and maximum conversion rate. Customers receive real-time price quotes, with a currency conversion tool for convenience, and the option to include duties and taxes.

The International Checkout purchasing team places orders on behalf of the international customers directly on the merchant’s website, following the normal checkout procedures and paying with US credit cards. The merchant ships to the International Checkout facility in Santa Monica, California. Each order is then inspected, packed, and shipped to the customer’s doorstep via FedEx or UPS, traceable and insured, anywhere in the world.

That Aha! Moment
Raised in Holland, International Checkout CEO and President Saskia Strick moved to Los Angeles in 1997, where she was kept busy during her spare time with requests from friends overseas anxious to acquire goods from the United States. Because most US retailers did not sell or ship internationally, Strick would order the goods on her friends’ behalf and then ship the goods from her home.

In an “Aha!” moment, Strick says: “I recognized that someone needed to provide merchants with an international logistics solution,” one that would help them tap into the vast potential of this unmet demand.  With this inspiration, she launched International Checkout in 2002.

Consumers worldwide can now shop at any of the 160-plus US websites partnered with International Checkout, including bebe, Dr. Martens, and several of Internet Retailer’s Top 500.

Rapid Growth and Success
Strick’s vision and leadership have merited a 2,183% leap in revenues over the past six years. International Checkout experienced a 94% increase in revenues and added seventy more retailers to its roster in 2008, supported by a mere 12% increase in staff. This efficiency was achieved through continuous streamlining of the proprietary software and procedures, including a significant reduction of customer service workload due to the development of comprehensive customer logins, and an automated Return Material Authorization (RMA) system.

Further improvements in technology initiated by Strick during 2008 included the development of an integration code that transfers product images from the retailer’s shopping cart to the International Checkout landing page; the launch of a Branded Checkout offering, custom-designed to match the look of the retailer’s website; and the redesign of the InternationalCheckout.com site, featuring partner websites in a user-friendly Shop-by-Category format.

On the business front, Strick has cultivated strategic partnerships with e-commerce solutions—including UniteU, Ventura Web Design, and Miva Merchant—to promote the solution to their retailers, thereby generating the opportunity for exponential growth.  A Partner Store Login was also created, providing detailed reporting capabilities including order detail, customer contact information, and billing and shipping countries. The retailer can use this data for marketing purposes and to develop international growth strategies.

Strick has never accepted any investment or venture capital, and the company remains debt-free. She maintains 100% ownership of the business—and of her accomplishments.

About Saskia Strick
As a child in Holland, Saskia Strick struggled academically due to dyslexia, a condition that went undiagnosed in her younger years. She relocated to London after high school to pursue a career as a model and appeared on the covers of leading fashion publications such as Vogue, Cosmopolitan, and Marie Claire, as well as in the renowned Pirelli calendar. She also starred in Milli Vanilli’s music video Blame It on the Rain. She later returned to Holland to help run her family’s successful import/export business.

Lured by sunshine and the American Dream, Strick moved to Los Angeles in 1997, without a plan but with a strong sense of possibility.  Undeterred by the fact that she had no capital, college degree, or formal business experience, Strick was able to spot a good opportunity when she saw it and launched International Checkout in 2002.

About International Checkout:
International Checkout, Inc., is an innovative global e-commerce solution providing retailers with access to the billions of dollars spent online by international consumers with none of the associated risks or difficulties. With six years of experience and over 160+ retail partners (including DrMartens.com, bebe.com, and many of Internet Retailer’s Top 500), International Checkout’s record of success is unparalleled. International Checkout guarantees against fraud, provides shipping worldwide, and offers world-class multi-lingual customer service. Within hours, retailers can tap into the world market with no cost or investment of internal resources. With the click of an “International Checkout” button, the retailer’s shopping cart is seamlessly transferred to a user-friendly, branded, AJAX-driven single-page checkout that includes real-time price quotes and duties and taxes.

By Keith Rosen

Keith Rosen won the Stevie Award for Sales Education Leader of the Year in the 2008 Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service

Stop. Just stop for the next several minutes that it’s going to take you to read this. Okay, now take a breath. Get off the treadmill for a moment and ask yourself some questions. Yes, these questions are that important. So important, in fact, that they could change your entire perspective of what you’re doing, how you’re doing it, and how much you really need to be doing in order to generate the worthwhile results you’re looking for.

Because the truth is, you just may be running so fast in an attempt to catch up on your sales numbers that you don’t recognize the blinders you’ve developed—blinders that are obstructing your view of the fuller picture when it comes to driving the right sales activity. Here are the questions you need to ask yourself (and your sales team):

With all the effort I’m putting forth in my attempt to generate as much business as possible:

- Am I aware of the activities and benchmarked proven practices (both the activities and the dialogue/message I need to communicate) that I need to engage in daily to secure my success?

- Am I measuring the numbers and the results of my efforts and allowing these statistical data points to be the driving force behind my sales activities?

- When attempting to convert a contact into a qualified prospect, do I know how much cold-calling and prospecting activity is actually enough (emails, voice mails, live calls/connections, letters, and so on), and when to call it quits and move on?

 - Do I know how many calls/contacts I need to make each day, each week, and how often I need to follow up with a qualified prospect in order to earn their business or move them to the next stage of my sales process? (And have I even defined those specific steps in my sales process to begin with?)

- Do I hold myself accountable when it comes to engaging in the right activities in the most efficient way possible through the effective use of a daily routine?

- When calling on or meeting with prospects, do I have a clear set of outlined objectives that I need to accomplish on every call and during each meeting, especially when delivering a presentation?

- Have I identified the lifetime value of each client or account in order to classify customers according to their sales potential? (What’s the economic impact of the time you invest?)

- Do I have a detailed strategy for each of my clients to ensure that I’m maximizing every conceivable up-selling and cross-selling opportunity?

- Am I fully leveraging the power and potential of my CRM solution for prospect, client, and territory management? (Do you have a call report system?)

- Do I have the right questions to provide me with the critical intel I need in order to qualify each person as a viable prospect, so that I can most effectively determine where my limited and precious time is best invested?

To clarify further, when it comes to the type of questions you need to be asking each prospect, this isn’t limited to Selling 101-Uncovering a Need. I’m also referring to understanding how they buy, how they make decisions, the internal workings of the company, the people and egos involved, the process they are going to go through when they hang up the phone or end the meeting—and then attempt to solve the problem or find a new solution on their own using the resources they already have.  Not to mention the concerns or roadblocks that you could encounter down the road that would stall the potential for a sale, the timely and relevant issues that are going on internally, the overall mood of the company and its leaders, and so on. (Hint: low closing percentages often signify a misalignment in whom you should be presenting to and following up with in the first place.)

If you don’t have the answers to these crucial questions, you’re robbing yourself of the opportunity to enjoy the peace of mind that comes from utilizing a formulaic approach to selling. After all, if you define it, you can refine it. If you’ve ever wondered why salespeople fall into a sales slump, here’s the main cause: they weren’t honoring their sales process by the numbers. Those who continue to “wing it” as their overall selling strategy are destined to experience ups and downs in their performance and in their stress level, and the waning confidence that follows when this amount of uncertainly is present.

I’ve decided—and many of my clients and readers are on board with this as well, so I hope you’ll join us—that it’s no longer as tough out there as it was. That’s right. Strip away what you hear in the media and look instead at what you can control, the one telltale sign that something in your selling formula needs to be modified or redefined.

If there are people in your organization, industry, or profession who are currently performing like rock stars, that should provide one vital insight: It can be done because it is being done by someone else!

Of course, it’s going to remain tough out there if you don’t have your defined best practices, data points, and numeric formula to help support your selling efforts.  It’s one thing to work on refining your selling and sales management skills, but in order to have a comprehensive solution to better performance, you need to have your finger on the pulse of the numbers that drive your activities in the first place. You can use the questions I’ve posed to help uncover the gaps in your data pool. These in turn will help refine your overall approach to how you prospect and sell, and the measurable effort that’s required for you to do so successfully.

Here’s some general statistical information about the selling profession that will help you begin the process of fine-tuning your own data-driven solution to increasing sales.

First, a few surprising stats:
48% of salespeople never follow up with a prospect.
25% of salespeople make a second contact and stop.
12% of salespeople make only three contacts and stop.
Only 10% of salespeople make more than three contacts.

Now, get this:
2% of sales are made on the first contact.
3% of sales are made on the second contact.
5% of sales are made on the third contact.
10% of sales are made on the fourth contact.
And 80% of sales are made on the fifth to twelfth contact.

These numbers may change depending upon your selling cycle, geographic location, target audience, the dollar amount of your deliverable, or the service or product you’re selling.  But the essence of this message remains intact: do you have your own set of data available to use as the cornerstone for your prospecting and selling strategy? If not, it’s the same as getting into your car and saying before embarking on a trip: “Okay, I need to get to a specific destination, but I’m not sure which direction to travel or how long it’s going to take me to get there.”

It’s no longer about simply doing more, but about doing more of what’s right. In our new marketplace, going out in the field and just doing more of what you did yesterday would be the same as trying to sell VCR’s, pagers, and CD’s today. (Only the other day one of my children asked me, “Dad, what’s a CD?”). Your product will have changed over the years, but while your selling and management strategy needs to evolve as well, the evolution must be guided by numeric benchmarks in order to see the full panorama around your current situation. Doing this will eliminate the costly oversights I’ve detailed above, and ensure your future success.

We all need to be reminded of the universal law “We resist what we need to learn the most.” While salespeople and sales managers are more inclined to have a “let’s just get out there and make it happen” attitude, we need to shorten the reins before engaging in blind sales activities. Start by doing what is often perceived as the mundane task of benchmarking the right practices, and then measuring their effectiveness by the numbers. Empirical data will provide the blueprint you need to succeed as well as the certainty and confidence necessary for a healthy sales attitude.

Note: If you’re looking for a great tool to help develop your prospecting formula and the measurable efforts needed to achieve your sales goals, check out my Prospecting Calculator here and enjoy the confidence and certainty you’ll experience when you prospect by the numbers.

This entry was first posted on Keith Rosen’s blog on Wednesday, May 13th, 2009

About Keith Rosen:
Keith Rosen is the Executive Sales Coach that top salespeople and managers call first to attract more prospects, close more sales, and develop a team of top performing sales champions. For over twenty years, Rosen has successfully coached more salespeople and managers than any other coach on the planet to achieve positive, measurable change. An award winning columnist, speaker, and best selling author, Rosen has written several books on leadership, time management, selling, cold calling, and closing the sale. His book Coaching Salespeople into Sales Champions was named the 2008 Sales Leadership Book of the Year and one of the World's Best Business Books of 2009.

As a globally recognized authority on sales and leadership, Inc. and Fast Company named Rosen one of the five most influential executive coaches. He has been featured in Entrepreneur, Inc., Fortune, the New York Times, Selling Power, CBSNews.com, the Wall Street Journal and Sales and Marketing Management, and is a frequent guest on Channel 12 News. For sales training videos, podcasts, more information on executive coaching and sales training, or to contact Rosen, visit www.ProfitBuilders.com or www.CoachingSalespeople.com, call 516-771-1444, or email info@profitbuilders.com. Subscribe to his newsletter, The Winners Path.

uTest won the Stevie Award for Best New Company of the Year in The 2009 American Business Awards. uTest is the world’s largest marketplace for software testing services. The company provides real-world testing services through its community of 18,000+ professional testers from 150 countries around the world. More than 400 companies – from web start-ups to enterprise software firms – have signed up for the uTest marketplace.

		Read the full text of uTest's Stevie Award-winning entry ...

Blogs, or web logs, are all the rage these days. Each month in this space we'll point you to several blogs that we think might be of interest to you.

Training Day: The blog for developmental professionals.
WeSeedBlog: A fun, free, risk-free way for real people to get a clue about the market and make better financial decisions, created by Stevie Award winner WeSeed.com.
Tim's Blog: The thoughts of Tim Andrews, CEO of the Advertising Specialty Institute.
TechCrunch: A blog dedicated to profiling and reviewing new Internet products and companies.