Moving beyond just selling
A leading service provider in the UK construction industry deconstructed sales performance to improve long-term profitability.
The company continued to experience year-on-year increase in new customers but although operating cost had not grown significantly, there was no discernible increase in average selling price and profit levels remained stumblingly static. Additionally, a £2M investment in a new value-added service element had all but failed to attract new or existing customers. Management turned to Focus Solutions for assistance.
The answer lay in better understanding customer behaviour in accessing service features and benefits and the relationship with customer longevity, customer attrition, the sales process and sales remuneration programme. A more detailed customer segmentation model profiled four key segments that in-turn enabled management to modularise the service offering such that customers no longer had a perception of over or under-service and the sales team were focused on selling situation-specific service modules to the right target customer segment. Appropriate changes to the sales remuneration programme were also introduced.
New customer sales fell slightly but customer loyalty (% of customer renewals at 12 months) increased from 62% to 92%. Average selling price also fell but the sales team were able to improve cross-selling and so revenue generated from core customers rose by 20%.
And the £2M product launch failure? We helped profile the appropriate target customer segment, reconfigure the sales process, adjust the product and pricing model, and create a new promotion campaign. A successful relaunch followed.
