A manufacturer in the electrical industry suffered a significant fall in profitability and realised it needed to move away from price driven sales.

Solution

Competitive Advantage undertook an initial marketing audit. This identified a number of opportunities and a marketing plan was developed which focused on adding value and gaining better control of the company’s routes to market.

Over time the business had focused sales effort on its distribution, using discounting to achieve its monthly sales targets. To escape dependency on this channel to market a “demand-pull” approach was adopted selling to engineers. Some of the sales team were re-focused into specification sales activity and mentored for a period of 6 months. During this time they were able to develop an understanding of the decision making process and build confidence in their technical selling skills. The team focused on promoting the company’s higher value products, supporting their activities with CPD seminars, specialist literature and analysis of project activity.

Benefits

Knowledge of the major construction projects, and the strength of product specifications, meant that the company was able to resist some of the pressures from distributors to reduce price.

They took control of their market, halting the decline in market share and strengthening prices. There was subsequent sales growth in the most profitable, specified, product ranges.