1. the new form of acquisition - OVERVIEW
There are good reasons why successful sales managers rely on the extremely effective marketing instrument of e-sales promotion. They skillfully combine online with offline.
I was given this interesting task in 2018. Due to a repositioning and the implementation of a digitalization strategy, the acquisition of new customers had to be optimized.
For the sake of simplicity, I will refer below to the automatized, bagile (agile), coachable acquisition and use the short form: abc acquisition project..,
The sales department with more than 20 salespeople at 16 locations, which sells products requiring intensive consultation to end customers (planning kitchens), should receive a significant number* of qualified leads per week and generate six-figure* additional sales (per week) with an optimized acquisition process.
These were my goals:
- Acquisition Sales: increase massively*.
- Contact quality: improve significantly*.
- Consistent performance: Guarantee improved contact quality with every initial contact.
- Lead processing: Guarantee first-class lead processing within 24 hours, even in vacation, illness or overload situations.
*Out of consideration for my former employer, I will refrain from giving figures.
To start with, the ambitious abc acquisition project was a real challenge.
Although I already had experience with larger acquisition projects in export (development of over 120 specialist retail partners in Germany, Austria and the Netherlands), I was able to learn a lot more through the abc acquisition project .
You can find out how I managed to achieve the above goals in this project presentation.
To give you a practical idea of how the abc acquisition project works, I have described a fictitious customer experience. Read the following Personas story about the Stettler family.
Agile sales methods
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2. the personas story brings out the potential
Private homeowners and owners of single-family homes purchase 5,000 kitchens per month for renovation and new construction projects.
2)
The search term “kitchen” is entered 12,000 times a month on Google. It is therefore clear that the purchasing processes start with Google. This becomes even clearer if you use the search term “Buy a kitchen” analyzed. The search volume here is 1200 entries per month.
Once people have recognized a problem, experience has shown that the next step should be as simple as possible. That’s why we want to make it as easy and convenient as possible for potential customers to get the information they need with the abc-Aqkuiseprojket.
Find out what this looks like in practice from our fictitious Stettler family.
Mr. and Mrs. Stettler are sitting at breakfast on a rainy Sunday with their two daughters (aged 12 and 14), talking animatedly about an old topic. The 40-year-old kitchen urgently needs to be replaced!
Mr. Stettler (48) promises to do some more research on the Internet and finally get down to business. He doesn’t know exactly what he means by that. When Mr. Stettler enters “kitchen planning” into the Google search engine, he receives 41.7 million search results. He eagerly clicks through a large number of websites and studies the various manufacturers, kitchen studios and appliance brands.
The first questions arise very quickly. What does “individually planned” mean? How much will his kitchen project cost? Mr. Stettler finds no answers to these questions. But what disappoints him even more is that even after 3 hours of intensive internet research, he hasn’t really made any progress. So tomorrow he will have to call various kitchen studios and ask how he can get a quote – he doesn’t like that at all.
Slightly annoyed, he googles “kitchen offers”. In his current situation, Mr. Stettler is particularly struck by this search result: Describe your dream kitchen -> receive a free kitchen quote. He then clicks through a kitchen configurator and leaves his contact details. Just 10 minutes later, his phone rings and a kitchen consultant answers. Mr. Stettler replies in amazement: “It’s that quick, even on a Sunday afternoon!”
With the words: “Yes, we are very fast”, the consultant starts an informative conversation and answers Mr. Stettler’s questions. At some points, the advisor points out the need to arrange a personal consultation. The conversation ends with a specific date. After 10 minutes, Mr. Stettler receives a confirmation email including a call note and all the details of his personal advisor at location xy. Mr. Stettler is delighted.
If a company wants to automate the inflow of prospective buyers, the sales manager must:
- Simplify and optimize the search and purchase process2)of potential new customers so that maximum trust is created in the first acquisition process steps
- Create a motivating, appreciative acquisition working environment for salespeople3) so that acquisition is really fun
- Establish an agile4)acquisition mechanism that improves in a self-regulating5) manner
Buyer personas
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facts vividly.
3. strategies used to develop potential
The very similar mindsets and approaches of many kitchen suppliers mean that the USPs of many suppliers are similar and have effectively disappeared due to harmonization.
With the somewhat forgotten UAP’s Unique Advertising Proposition(communicative profiling), great competitive advantages can be generated. Especially when eMarketing comes into play.
Most competitors do not take advantage of these opportunities and are (still) dormant in this respect. This offers clever sales and marketing managers who set up their EAPs using eMarketing and combine them with agile sales methods unimagined competitive advantages. I became aware of this untapped potential for success through a competitor analysis.
In this project, we have sharpened our USP by offering top quality + top price, have supplemented with + top conversion service incl. Site management. We have also set up a UAP, i.e. barrier-free 360° acquisition communication, with eMarketing tools and digital sales management.
To create the competitor analysis, I examined the websites of, among others
80 competitors. When analyzing the web communication, I was interested in the extent to which active acquisition communication is carried out.
Conclusion: Many companies do not actively use their websites to initiate contact. Sales potential is literally waiting to be tapped with eMarketing. I also realized from further analysis that very few websites use the eMarketing principles of successful eMarketers.
- Instead of explaining their solution competence, many competitors communicate their product competence.
- Instead of dealing with customer processes, you are busy with your own sales processes.
- Instead of letting satisfied customers talk about successful projects, their copywriters describe the products on offer in the best prose.
- Instead of visual evidence, there is a lot of marketing text with claims
We have derived the following opportunities from the lack of implementation of eMarketing principles on competitor websites and recorded them in the SWOT analysis. We have great opportunities:
- massively increase the number of leads. |
How? By building trust quickly and cleverly! - massively increase the number of appointments. |
How? By synchronizing our acquisition processes much more closely with the purchasing process phases! - the number of appointments attended massively. |
How? By using testimonials. - increase the completion rate by double digits. |
How? By supporting the sales process of sellers with image evidence*.
You recognize the great competitive advantages that you can use for yourself with an eLead project. But you don’t know exactly how you can get involved?
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4. the implementation
Many a good strategy has failed due to a lack of implementation know-how. Because of this realization, I invested a lot of time in the topic of implementation and was able to learn the most interesting lessons for myself.
Why do so many well thought-out acquisition projects come to nothing? Does a lack of implementation management have a greater impact on failure than assumed? Are we perhaps investing too much time in strategy development and too little in the day-to-day management of the necessary acuities? In my search for answers and more implementation power, Thomas Witt Consulting gave me the decisive tip on the 4 disciplines of implementation.
Two years ago, I started to incorporate the process of effective implementation into various projects. This is also the case with this acquisition project. Today I know that great success is less a question of an individual’s ingenious strategy and more a question of the daily implementation actions of a team. You can find out more in the next section.
In my experience, the simple principles, the clear implementation process and the helpful meeting rituals are easy to understand and there are many recognizable parallels to agile management such as SCRUM. This method has its first widespread and sustainable success in IT development. The IT sector is confronted with a high level of complexity, high customer demands and resource bottlenecks. This is exactly the situation we had in this acquisition project. We have found the most important element of success with the 4 disciplines.
With the 4 disciplines of implementation, all team members gain a completely new understanding of how success is achieved.
It is a completely new experience for project and sales staff to measure and optimize their actions (leading indicators) and thus visibly control results. Many people are accustomed to waiting for the result figures, explaining results and determining who is to blame.
With almost 60 participants at various locations in Germany and abroad, this project was challenging but very interesting and instructive. As a learning for future projects of this size, I would:
- Conduct all team meetings of the project and sales teams in Microsoft Teams
- expand the Sales Funnel function and raise it to the management level of a division manager
- focus the CRM functionalities even more strongly on the acquisition process
Implementing strategies safely
and achieving goals successfully
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What is the secret behind successful implementations? The well-known authors publish a globally proven concept from FranklinCovey, which is already being used by 1400 companies.
