Challenge
A Plastics manufacturer was experiencing their sixth continuous quarter of reduced turnover. I was recruited by them to turnaround this situation on their behalf.
Action
Over the first few weeks I researched our market, our customers, our competitors and our sales process. I met with each director to gain a better understanding of our strengths and weaknesses. Also and more importantly I scheduled appointments every day with our existing customers listening to them, gaining feedback from them on our performance discovering in what ways we could improve and eliciting any potential new business that may occur over next year.
I quickly recognised a gap in our business development approach – we desperately required a more structured and focused approach on lead generation. Utilising my expertise and the knowledge quickly gained about our business, I developed and executed a contact strategy to optimise coverage and opportunity detection.
I also created an enhanced business plan and new monthly forecasts for operations to maximise our volume and productivity. This allowed them to plan their operations with confidence and adhere to the schedule.
From day 1, I developed and maintained solid business relationships with all our customers to gain incremental business and increase their confidence in our ability to satisfy their requirements. I acknowledged all customer’s queries and issues on the same day either resolving that day or communicating when it would be resolved keeping the up to date with our progress.
Whilst training and coaching the sales staff I focused the training on increasing business with our existing customer base, regaining some of our lost customers and gaining new customers. I embraced the existing performance management system enhancing it to better suit the sales team, introducing monthly performance reviews rather than the annual performance system.
Result
Over a sixth month period I boosted sales by 40% whilst increasing turnover for each consecutive quarter. Customer feedback was positive with 100% customer retention and doubling of the number of customers.