Case Study:
Saving A Critical Sale

The Company

Our client was a leading force in the traditional products and services that they supplied to industry and government customers. Based on market trends, they decided to introduce a new technology solution to their market. New competitors had announced a line of similar technology products and were starting to sell into the same customer markets.

The new technology solution was many times more expensive than their traditional products but had compelling benefits to their customers. However, their sales force was not used to the larger sale environment with more customer contacts and the need to develop a business case for their product.

The Challenge

The sales campaign for their first potential customer, a well-known opinion leader in the field, hit a major roadblock.

“Based on our evaluation, we’ve started a pilot project with your competitor’s equipment. We expect to buy from your competitor at the end of the pilot project.”

The Solution

Working with our client’s sales team and their executives, we first performed a Confronting Reality review. This review identified their customer’s real buying criteria and what customer contacts were involved in their decision.

Based on the information from the Confronting Reality review, we facilitated a Strategy Creation session wherein we aligned our client’s distinctive value with their client’s true operational needs. Our client’s distinctive value would provide a significant improvement for the customer’s operations. A solid business case could be developed for our client’s product being more cost effective than their competitor’s product.

But this value had not been communicated in business terms to their customer contacts. Nor had there been any communication with the customer contact that made the economic buying decision.

We helped create a new strategy and a specific action plan to communicate our client’s distinctive value to all of the customer contacts.

The Result

Our client received the largest contract in their history. Annual revenue increased by 35% without adding additional sales staff. They went on to gain a dominant position in their targeted markets for their new technology products.

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