Industry
Importer/Distributor - Interior Decor products, National Company

Background
A well established market leader in interior decor products distributing their products via retail outlets throughout Australia were under extreme pressure from competitors focused on taking market share through price. Historically, the company was known for superior service and were able to retain good profit margins. This was now under attack and would be rapidly eroded if they met the current market place pricing. The sales force were relationship sellers and relied on long term relationships to secure sales. There was low level market intelligence and systems in place to enable effective management and decision-making for the team to respond to the market.

Sales Focus International Approach
To better understand the customers’ challenges, we conducted a review of the market to ascertain the degree of activity of the competitors, their strategies and customer responses to their strategies. The current systems and processes were reviewed to ascertain business intelligence requirements and benchmarking of performances against the new strategy.

A strategy was developed that focused on increased customer loyalty that would close the market off to competitors for minimum two years without sacrifice of profits to the business. New performance measurement tools were installed along with sales force restructuring to minimise cost centres within specific role requirements.

Overall, our client’s new go-to-market strategy, focused on high levels of service and customer focus, and would result in increased consideration and improved loyalty to the brand. It enabled them to retain their market leader status.

Results
-Increased customer base numbers
-Increased loyalty of existing customer
-Retention of profit margins

The business was able to mnimise the effect of competitor behaviour and cause competitors to reduce their overall operational size and market share.