Sales in industry faces numerous challenges: international sourcing is making offerings more alike, price pressure is rising, and in most cases sales hasn't changed in the last 15 years. As a result, salespeople are barely digitalised and many internal processes are still carried out largely by hand. Our client faced the challenge that a new management team had taken over, and a precise understanding of the starting position in sales had to be gained.
In collaboration with CustomersX®, a Sales Excellence assessment was carried out. It determined the key weaknesses and potential from the perspective of employees and customers, in order to increase growth and profit in a focused way. The result was a very robust basis for decisions for those responsible. On one hand, it became clear that rising competition was to be expected in an important market. On the other, the systematic analysis of the Sales Excellence success factors identified the specific strengths and weaknesses of the sales system. This gives the new management team the opportunity to improve sales in a very targeted way over the coming months.
Customer Value-based Decision Making
Customer-centric Transformation
Co-Creation
Customer Management
In many companies, sales is changed only very rarely. That was true for our client. Many routines settle in over the years, existing competencies become entrenched, and it's easy to get the impression that everything is going to plan. Yet more and more industries are affected by change and characterised by increasingly tough competition. The biggest challenge here isn't sales itself, but the mindset cultivated over decades. Sales systems that aren't changed for years can usually only be transformed with very great effort. This creates a major risk for the company and a high potential for frustration among employees. Our client, too, had made no changes or training in sales for years. When profit and growth stagnated, they tried to counter this with cost savings and more pressure — but success failed to materialise. The realisation grew that the sales system needed to be adapted systematically to the new reality, and changed more continuously in future.
Based on our DTC approach, we developed a project approach to establish Sales Excellence as a management competency within the company. The goal was to understand precisely, from the perspective of customers and employees, where to set priorities for change in order to improve sales in industry.
As a first step
using our Sales Excellence approach, the strengths and weaknesses of the existing sales system were determined. For this, an external survey was conducted among customers. This made it possible to identify the key value drivers and develop a focused improvement approach. We recommend using Sales Excellence in practice because, in sales especially, the lack of systematic development means there are many 'building sites.' This makes it easy for those in charge to spread themselves too thin. Sales Excellence enables a deeper understanding and, building on that, a clear focus.
As a second step
the sales staff were surveyed. This made it possible to compare the internal view with the customers' assessment. Numerous insights came to light that will be important for a successful transformation.
For example, the importance of value-added services was completely underestimated from the perspective of management and sales. Customers, meanwhile, stated that value-added services now carry just as much weight in their choice as the actual products. The range of services was also unknown to most customers. While sales were quite critical of their own customer-acquisition and customer-value-growth competencies, customers had already come to terms with it. New opportunities were no longer even presented, but handed straight to competitors. Sales and customers had made themselves comfortable. As the offerings became less and less convincing, sales increasingly took on a service function — which pleased customers but, from a cost perspective, was not an ideal solution. The surveys also showed that the company had sufficient competencies on hardly any Sales Excellence dimension. Here, a mistake can quickly happen: tackling too many points through frantic activity, which paralyses the organisation.
In summary
A systematic Sales Excellence analysis delivers a value-oriented basis for decisions on sales optimisation. It generates information that companies usually don't have. Precisely because so many companies have a massive backlog of investment in sales, the systematic analysis is highly recommended. It ensures that, in a subsequent transformation, growth and profit can be increased in a targeted way. This is extremely helpful in sales in industry.
*We take confidentiality towards our clients seriously. The name has been changed; the results are real.
