A manufacturer of specialist products served a variety of engineering applications. These included the construction sector, but it was only a niche market. Salesmen had to be generalists, dealing with many different customer types and not becoming involved in specification selling.

Construction represented an opportunity but there was not the industry knowledge within the company to develop it effectively.

Solution

Competitive Advantage was able to use its specialist skills and experience to propose a plan to develop the market. To minimise costs the consultancy worked as mentor with a recently appointed marketing executive within the company.

In this way much of the basic research required to evaluate the company’s strengths, weaknesses and opportunities was conducted in-house. The project identified key decision makers and the factors important to them when selecting products. From there it was possible to develop a series of sales arguments and target customers, including specifiers.

To help the sales team in-house training was provided in distributor development and specification selling.

Benefits

A programme to develop the construction sector was implemented, with in-house ownership of the project. Cost of consultancy was minimised and skills were transferred to the company's own staff.