The owner was discouraged.
His manufacturing company had been in business for 18 years but with slow, ever-declining sales, the outlook was dim.
He added a sales manager, hoping that would be the key to long-term, forecastable growth.
But things remained stagnant.
The owner tried implementing processes for operations and understood that the same was needed for sales growth, but he didn’t have the knowledge to do this on his own.
This case study examines the deeper issues going on in the company, and how an expert sales strategist was able to rehabilitate the failing business.
The problem
Here’s a closer look at what the owner was experiencing in his business:
- Sales were flat for 3 years in a row and continued their downward spiral.
- Creditors weren’t willing to extend credit limits and some vendors were requiring cash-on-delivery transactions.
- The sales functions had no structure. They lacked goals, processes and a compensation plan.
- The business had no value proposition or visibility into the pipeline. There were no sales cycle times and no insight into what competitors were doing.
In despair, the owner called on Sidehill Consulting for some much-needed guidance.
The solution
The experienced consultant was ready to spring into action for the struggling business and get them started on an upward trajectory of sustainable sales growth.
These are the strategies that were implemented to combat declining sales:
- We created a sales and marketing plan after analyzing the SX Sales Assessment results.
- We narrowed the company’s product offering to only profitable lines and redefined product propositions.
- We implemented an enhanced lead-generation program.
- We established clear roles for both internal and external sales functions and tied them to behavioral and revenue performance objectives.
- We onboarded a new sales manager and incorporated independent sales resources to execute new processes.
- We established forecasting and reporting tools that satisfied creditors as well as provided insight into their own sales pipeline and product demand.
The results
The outcome of these strategies was more than the owner could have hoped for.
Sales started to increase within the first six months that Sidehill Consulting was on the job, and the business became profitable after just 10 months.
Their projected revenue for 2019 is $4.8 million, which is $0.2 million above what was needed for additional funds to be released to invest in production improvements.
Sales-growth rehab that works
Without the help of an expert and with continued declining sales, this owner would have eventually had to close the doors to the business – probably with a fair amount of debt.
Sidehill Consulting used proprietary assessment results to determine a sales and marketing strategy that better supported the organization’s sales growth objectives.