Introduction
Grow the Topline, Protect the Bottom Line
A leading private equity-owned global manufacturing company, historically grown through acquisitions, desired to organically increase its topline without jeopardizing its bottom line.
The goal was to create a commercial excellence design for their European division, backed by recommendations and prioritized development areas.
They partnered with the Alexander Group based on our excellence in driving scalable and sustainable revenue growth.
Approach
Assess Current State Complexities
The commercial excellence design started with a detailed assessment of the current state. We identified key development areas through a survey, interviews and several executive workshops. Segmentation of accounts and developing an opportunity model were critical project components.
The initial priority was to drive organic growth and create tangible financial results within the desirable time horizon, defining areas of their go-to-market strategy that would deliver the highest ROI.
Commercial excellence design analysis can bring multiple issues to light. Alexander Group worked closely with the client to address organization silo mentalities and resistance to change. In addition, we addressed data integration and consolidation issues that arose from having multiple business units.
Change management was a critical part of the project, further accentuated by a change in ownership during the project engagement.
Key Findings
Data and Systems Inconsistency
The complex nature of their organizational structure, which had evolved primarily through acquisitions, was further complicated by 45% of their 20+ business units having their own unique enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. This fostered a data integrity issue across their business which made it challenging to accurately diagnose issues or validate successes.
Inconsistent Coverage & Unclear Role Collaboration
Due to the decentralized nature of the business, roles within the company were actively calling on the same customer without knowledge of their peer’s ongoing outreach.
Sub-Optimal Channel Partner Configuration
Different areas & regions of the business were utilizing channel partners for various purposes without a common strategy or approach.
Compensation Plan Misalignment
The seller feedback survey highlighted a gap between seller’s understanding of their complex sales compensation plans and intended translation of business objectives to sales behaviors.
Recommendations & Outcomes
Tailored Commercial Design to Increase Bookings
The first recommendation focused on creating differentiated coverage of accounts based on their value to the business. This approach would ensure customer satisfaction and allow for retention, expansion and conversion of opportunities. We recommended segmenting accounts to allow for the creation of a vertical-oriented strategic accounts program to cover the highest opportunity customers, a mid-tier segment to cover territory customers, and an inside sales program to cover low-touch/high-velocity customers.
Additional recommendations included differentiated job roles, codified rules of engagement, appropriate deployment strategy and compensation plans fit for the desired sales motions.
Designing a Revenue Operations function supported these recommendations, centralizing sales, marketing and services disciplines, and providing the commercial organization with the required tools, processes and resources to ensure sustainable performance growth.
The revenue operations function recommendation included the design of the appropriate team structure, job roles per discipline, headcounts and governance, as well as metrics and dashboards to ensure proper management beyond the engagement period.
Commercial Excellence includes rationalizing direct vs. indirect go-to-market strategy, achieved by setting up a Partner Channel Program. This program consisted of a recruitment methodology to optimize the use of business partners and performance management and segmentation tools to increase their value-add to the business.
Finally, we designed a detailed opportunity model to assist the client in their future efforts.
Business case expectations include doubling bookings within a three-year horizon across five workstreams that include a detailed design and GTM buildout of Strategic, Mid-tier and Inside Sales segments, Channel Partner Program and a best-in-class Revenue Operations function.
Engaging an Expert
Identifying Strategic Opportunities for Revenue Growth
Experts at the Alexander Group can help you build, improve and maintain your sales organization to increase revenue growth.
About Alexander Group
Alexander Group understands your revenue growth challenges. Since 1985, we’ve served more than 3,000 companies across the globe. This experience gives us not only a highly sophisticated set of best practices to grow revenue—we also have a rich repository of unique industry data that informs all our recommendations. Aligning product, marketing, operations and finance efforts behind a successful sales organization takes insight and hard work. We help the world’s leading organizations build the right revenue vision, transform their organizations and deliver results.
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