Investor-Owned Industrial Coatings Supplier Achieves 5X Growth In Active Customers While Increasing Gross Margins By 24%

This $20m+ investor-owned manufacturer is a supplier of upgrade solutions to protect indutrial equipment in extreme abrasion and erosion environments.

Their offerings were technically superior to that of many of its competitors, but the sales force lacked the value-selling attitude, direction, and sales skills necessary to drive revolutionary sales growth.

This organization was profitable, but their market diversity was limited. 70% of their sales were coming from only a few major accounts in a single highly volatile market sector.

Selling margins were good, but growing competition in their primary market was generating significant pricing pressure, and threatening to erode their 80+% market share. Investors had already held longer than planned, and were seeking to attract acquisition suitors.

Growth opportunities were limited by the already high market share and growing competitive threats, which created a significant challenge to attracting substantial acquisition investments.

With investors anxious to cash out, it was paramount that they be able to convince would-be suitors of the potential for future sales and profit growth of the business.

To overcome the current challenge of limited growth opportunity in its primary market, it would be critical to extend the relevance of its solutions into new markets, and diversify its base of active customers to solidify its foundation and stablize demand.

The most feasible path for growth was to identify, prioritize, and penetrate new target markets and to develop relevant solution applications for those markets.

Developing stronger market recognition of the brand and impactful sales channels would also be a top priority.

This organization engaged Scott for the purpose of facilitating rapid penetration and revolutionary sales growth of its top priority power generation market.

Scott collaborated with executive leadership and all departments to perform a situational analysis and to develop a clear understanding of the technology offering. Following the initial situation diagnosis, Scott facilitated execution of a comprehensive sales strategy, including the following key components:

• Facilitation of product development teams to identify, prototype, and launch high value relevant applications
• Facilitation of sales channel development team to identify and create new sales channels, recruiting processes, sales training programs, and sales coaching support for the new sales force
• Collaborative development of high-impact marketing collateral, case studies, testimonials, and models for calculating and communicating quantifiable economic value
• Partnering and co-marketing relationships with key Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs)
• Developing relationships with independent industry experts (e.g. EPRI) and publishers (e.g. Platts) to generate industry awareness and credibility

The project entailed organization-wide collaborative definition of critical sales territories, identification of key products with unique economic value (UEV), and defining optimum methods of sales coverage.

In support of the primary acquisition objective, Scott facilitated the onboarding and training of a complete sales force of 22 reps.

Active customers in the targeted market were increased by nearly 500%, and selling margins were up 24%.

Multiple new product applications were launched, increasing clients market relevance by a factor of 10X.