Industrial Products

Industry Situation

The industrial automation market experienced steady growth, with increasing customization and software integration requirements. Niche competitors emerged to challenge established providers by targeting customers in key verticals – oil and gas, in addition to life sciences manufacturing. 

Client Situation

Our client was trapped in a non-productive cycle. The company considered countless different segmentation approaches, without settling on one. This stalled updating account assignments and selecting “named” accounts in key verticals – oil and gas, and life science manufacturing – enabling competitors to claim pieces of the market.

The client needed a new sales strategy to stress the breadth of their product line and deep vertical industry expertise. Instead of reviving sales through a few productivity initiatives, internal resources created 30+ disconnected strategies. This approach had little chance of succeeding.

Key Issues

The client asked AGI to assist with the following tasks:

	Review each sales force productivity initiative, identify execution gaps, and re-prioritize in order to enable key stakeholders to select best-practice initiatives.
	Streamline internal communications. Each initiative saturated the field with internal communications, including requests for action.

AGI Solutions

AGI developed a comprehensive three-year sales productivity roadmap. For each initiative, we provided incremental cost and revenue projections based on concrete data inputs. We evaluated each initiative, not only on the basis of the three-year return, but also on implementation complexity. In the final phase, sales and service personnel received detailed, long-term action plans. 

Outcomes

The new sales productivity roadmap enabled the client to focus on more promising productivity initiatives. AGI developed new solution selling processes for each key segment, sales and service job definitions, rules of engagement, hiring profiles, sales process training specifications, performance metrics and goals, and new compensation plans. These changes provided the sales organization with a comprehensive and coordinated sales strategy to support an 11% CAGR.