Improving the Sales Pipeline for a Logistics Business

The Challenge

When our client came to us, they’d already identified two target industries – hi-tech and healthcare – where they saw great potential to grow their business. However, while they had the offering in place to make an impact in these sectors, their sales team was finding it hard to bring in new business. And if the sales team is being held back, so is the rest of the business. So we set about identifying the obstacles in their path and clearing the way forward.

Our Solution

Putting priorities in order

Once we started work, a set of objectives became immediately apparent. We knew we’d need to:

• Give the team a more logical means of selecting and prioritizing targets, preventing them from directing their efforts down blind alleys
• Make sure their pitches were built on genuine insights and relevant to the concerns of decision makers
• Find ways to improve procedural efficiency, ensuring sales could be closed quickly, increasing conversion rates and allowing the team to work more productively It sounds like a far-reaching, complex task.

But we knew that all of these objectives hinged on achieving a better understanding of the businesses in the target sectors, the triggers that would make them receptive to an approach, and the rationales they’d use to respond. So, if we could help our client to profile more intelligently, they’d be able to prioritize their targets and then pursue them in a focused, efficient manner.

Our approach

Using this thinking as our starting point, we put together a three-stage framework designed to leave the sales team better informed and better equipped. Using this methodology, we were able to identify a select pool of companies within the target sectors who had:

• Complex, unwieldy supply chains in need of improvement
• Upcoming contract tenders
• A high logistics spend

And because we were also able to obtain information on the decision making processes employed by these companies – as well the contact details for decision makers and key influencers – we could ensure our client was approaching the right prospects, at the right time and in the right way.

Business Impact

A team transformed

Free of the problems they’d had to contend with before, the sales team were able to close deals with more valuable prospects in less time. And since their 10-month engagement with us has come to an end, they’ve achieved astonishing results. In just three years, they’ve won more than €20 million in new business – representing a 200 fold return on their investment with us. Their conversion rate is up by 8% and with a more productive process in place, they’ll be able to leverage their competitive advantage for years to come. Better yet, because many of these new contracts were long term, multi-country agreements, the client has been able to break into new territories and expand their offering to include long-term strategic partnerships with businesses around the world.

And we could do it for you too

Providing research, analytics, and data management services across a range of corporate and professional services firms in a variety of industries across the Americas, Asia-Pacific, and EMEA, our Sales Enablement offering is all about giving companies the tools they need to take their businesses further. We’re powered by mind+machine – a unique combination of human expertise and best-in-class technologies that use smart algorithms to simplify key tasks. This approach enables us to design and manage processes that can generate and harness insights on a large scale, significantly cutting costs and timescales and helping businesses that partner with us to overtake the competition. With deep knowledge across multiple industry verticals, we can offer comprehensive support for your sales team, from profiling to pitch. And because we’ll leave you with a range of productivity enhancement tools, you’ll continue reaping the benefits long after our work with you has come to a close.

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