Business-to-business commerce suffers from stagnation problems that do not affect B2C, where brands quickly feel the effects of a disinterested target audience, particularly in the age of social media.<\/p>\n
In B2B, clients are more patient and value long-term relationships. However, they tend to place their business partners in silos: this means that increasing your sales necessarily involves reinventing your brand strategy.<\/p>\n
The company I\u2019m going to tell you about is a good example of a situation remedied by enlisting our services. This company was a good size, had been operating for several years, and had the human and material resources it needed to meet clear objectives. However, it had seen its revenue drop consistently over the previous five years. The decline was slow: just a few percentage points per year. Not enough to cause panic and lead to a re-examination of brand strategy, but just enough to cast blame on the sales team. This is a common story in many organizations.<\/p>\n
As soon as we began working with them, we could see that the sales team was unable to produce the results the management wanted because the offer was poorly defined, poorly expressed and poorly communicated. How can you expect a sales team to be high-performing and develop their market under these conditions?<\/p>\n
At Solocom, our method of analysis systematically re-examines the client\u2019s overall market approach, looking beyond individual people. We analyze brand discourse, company discourse, marketing tools, but also the on-the-ground approach. Our philosophy consists in revisiting all of the brand\u2019s points of contact, leaving no rock unturned.<\/p>\n
In our example here, the website was outdated across the board, and totally out of sync with the company\u2019s product \/ service offer. The logo had aged poorly and was neither specific nor original. The brochure added nothing to the conversation, and presented information that was almost useless to customers. Also, consider this: why print a costly brochure with factual and technical elements and no brand message, when these could be displayed on the website at a fraction of the cost?<\/p>\n
Finally, when wrapping up our analysis of all of their communications materials, we found that these materials were most often produced by freelancers. Never the same ones, with the main factor being price. This was a great recipe for inconsistency in the message, from one element to the next.<\/p>\n
Consciente de la n\u00e9cessit\u00e9 d\u2019innover, l\u2019entreprise venait de lancer un nouveau service. Celui-ci \u00e9tait complexe \u00e0 vendre sans aucun outil de communications pour le d\u00e9crire correctement. De plus, le cycle de vente de ce nouveau service \u00e9tait beaucoup plus long que le reste de l\u2019offre de l\u2019entreprise : de 6 et 18 mois, lorsque toutes les autres ventes de produits \u00e9taient presque instantan\u00e9es.<\/p>\n
Pour l\u2019\u00e9quipe de ventes, il \u00e9tait clair que le manque de formation et l\u2019atteinte des objectifs \u00e0 court terme sur tous les autres produits de l\u2019entreprise \u00e9taient totalement incompatibles avec les attentes li\u00e9es \u00e0 ce nouveau service qui, en bout de ligne, \u00e9tait achet\u00e9 par un autre niveau de d\u00e9cideurs chez les clients. Quand, de plus, la r\u00e9mun\u00e9ration des repr\u00e9sentants est reli\u00e9e au volume de ventes traditionnelles, lancer un nouveau service est une mission tout \u00e0 fait impossible.<\/p>\n
In spite of all this, the company was still bringing in tens of millions of dollars in sales, and was making a little profit. How long would this last? To reverse this trend of decreasing sales, the management decided to contact us.Putting our method to work, we developed a brand strategy focused on our client\u2019s ethos. We adapted the service offer in strategic areas of activity and provided recommendations for developing the market and restructuring the sales force, by focusing on levers of growth.<\/p>\n
As a result, the company saw a soaring increase in sales, with more than 13% growth in the year after these changes were introduced. So how about your positioning? Is it solid, and does it generate profits? Is your company living up to its full potential? To find out, give me a call.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Business-to-business commerce suffers from stagnation problems that do not affect B2C, where brands quickly feel the effects of a disinterested…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":1727,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"single-fullwidth.php","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1938","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n