Taking key customer accounts for granted by being unresponsive can be a short-cut to losing them altogether no matter how market leading the products.
Client: Leading Global Motive Power Company
Business: Producer of motive power, reserve power, aerospace, defence and speciality batteries for industrial applications.
Issue: A preferred supplier ranking was in jeopardy and sales were not being maximised. This was due to a lack of both awareness of their client’s overall needs and responsiveness to a wider client requirement for an innovative way to present the power options available for its industrial vehicles to their customers.
The company’s sales offer was focused on unit price and did not address considerations that were increasingly influencing the end users’ purchasing decision, including the green agenda, energy efficiency, and health and safety issues.
Solution: Vertical conducted interviews with key stakeholders across the client’s business to produce a comprehensive customer requirement report.
“We did this to define those areas where the account management was falling short,” said Vertical’s Cathy Bennett. “We brought the main players in both businesses together to create an effective partnership approach. We then used the feedback from sales to develop an innovative energy solutions proposition to generate increased sales for the Client.
“It was important to relay the marketing value of this where it mattered so we also undertook awareness training with the account management team to demonstrate the proposition’s potential both for the sales effort and in building customer relationships.”
Result: Preferred supplier status was retained and the decline in sales stopped. Orders were maintained through the recession despite a 50% reduction in sales of the industrial vehicles that the batteries were used for. They also saw an impressive increase of over 100% in the sales of energy efficient chargers within six months of the project launch
