- Service:Customer strategy
- Sector:Industrial products
Issue
AMR’s client had commissioned a leading strategy consultancy to analyse its sales force organisation and recommend improvements. Five years on, and the recommendations had not brought the promised benefits. Now, the question was how to review the organisation once more, and come away with actionable, pragmatic results?
Approach
In consultation with the client, AMR focused on three key issues:
• Which sales activities are seen as critical by customers?
• How well does the client perform these activities?
• In which areas should the client focus on improving performance?
We conducted over 220 interviews with customers. We recognised that the purchase decision is a multi-functional one involving a number of people, and therefore we talked not only to the purchasing contacts, but also to technical personnel and senior managers at customers. Owing to our experience and careful preparation, we achieved a hit rate of over 50% (i.e. total number of completed interviews relative to number of people called).
Recommendations
AMR established that customers required more support from our client to help optimise processes / reduce costs. Once support had been provided, the client required an efficient, responsive service. The existing sales force was trying to deliver both these services using the same personnel, resulting in over delivery in some areas, and underperformance in others, especially in the area of process optimisation.
We recommended that the client split the sales force:
• Building a separate “business development” force, focused on working with customers to optimise processes
• Reorganising “account management” activities to increase the range of support provided by the telephone sales support team, as opposed to the field sales force, while maintaining the service level. Resources released here helped to build the “business development” team.
Result
The client accepted our recommendations. Implementation was helped by the quality and quantity of research, providing direct customer feedback, in a depth not previously achieved, to help convince the sales force themselves.
Insight from AMR’s research
Talking to customers through in-depth interviews can identify fundamental improvements that a much more expensive, analytical, exercise can overlook!