Briefly, we are undertaking a strategic review of the sales operation of a
highly succesful UK subsidiary of a multinational organisation. The
company is widely acknowledged as an enlightened, forward thinking
organisation with one of the strongest global brands and has a core
product which delivers 90-95 of current sales revenue. The sales force are
passionate about the product and continue to deliver excellent sales
performance.
The issue I need help on relates to a separate product in the portfolio.
The product delivers a similar benefit to the core product using a totally
different delivery mechanism. Although the potential market is enormous
the product is not well understood by either customers or people within
the organisation. A large proportion of the sales force dislike it and
find it hard to sell. There are new competitors emerging providing the
same offering who could do extremely well where we have failed. The parent
company company is insistent that the product remains in the portfolio and
has set a revenue target for it - these last two points are not up for
debate.
The product consumes a disproportionate of management time and attention
and it hangs around the organisation's neck like a millstone - even the
product managers find it hard to get enthused. Various sales and marketing
approaches have been tried - i.e. sell through current channel, dedicated
sales force and telesales. none have proved effective to date - although
all could be made to work.
We are now looking to rethink the entire sales and marketing approach
using a cleasn sheet of paper. The first thing we want to do is inject
some creativity into the product relaunch process. We are keen to find
examples that we can benchmark against of others organisations who have
successfully relaunched products that were underperforming in a similar
way. We'd also like to hear suggestions for how that process might be
structured and to see the thoughts, questions and ideas of fellow list
members.
Thank you in anticipation of your assistance.
Rohit Talwar
rtalwarcbt@aol.com
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