A listed plant engineering group wanted to significantly expand its business with spare and wear parts as well as modernizations. It therefore commissioned the interim manager as Director Marketing Service to analyze the marketing and sales processes for this segment and to develop and implement a digital sales and marketing strategy.
Initial situation: marketing and sales hardly use digital applications
In the analysis, the interim manager quickly identified potential for improvement. For example, there was no cooperation between marketing and sales at the beginning of the mandate. Modern methods such as digital lead generation, data-driven marketing (performance marketing) or the use of existing tools for marketing automation were not understood and ignored by traditional marketing. Sales was largely left to its own devices when it came to market development. SAP and CRM data was also not being used in sales. For example, expired offers for services with a volume in the high double-digit millions were not followed up. Opportunities for cross-selling and upselling remained untapped.
New digital marketing strategy focuses on more sales
When developing the new digital marketing strategy, the interim manager focused on creating a powerful sales and marketing unit that uses performance marketing and marketing automation to help sales generate more business opportunities. The marketing expert manager paved the way for this with several projects. First, he adapted the marketing organization to the new task and filled the positions that had been created. He then introduced performance marketing in combination with marketing automation. With the strategically important topic of energy costs, the new marketing sales unit was then to be brought to life using a best practice campaign.
Reorganization of the marketing department as the cornerstone for digital sales
By creating a sales-oriented marketing unit and integrating it closely with sales, the interim manager deliberately delimited traditional marketing, which remained organized in the product groups and produced content. The new unit consists of three partners who jointly plan and implement market development. In addition to Sales, these are a revitalized Regional Marketing and the newly introduced Performance Marketing. The Regional Marketing Manager is responsible for the tasks, objectives and monitoring of the lead management processes. The Performance Marketing Manager is responsible for campaign implementation through to measuring success. The interim manager drafted job descriptions for both new marketing roles and filled the positions internally. He initially took on the role of Regional Marketing Manager himself.
Introduction of performance marketing and marketing automation
After the reorganization and closing ranks with Sales, the interim manager introduced the performance marketing methodology. Together with marketing automation, performance marketing forms the central basis for qualified leads that Sales can utilize directly. When designing performance marketing, the interim manager focused on economic success (offers won) and an end-to-end digital lead management process. The latter was achieved by linking the campaigns and tools to the CRM. In addition, the interim manager initiated profiling of the digital activities in order to be able to address customers in an even more targeted manner in future.
Efficient lead qualification with online calculators
As a practical test for digital marketing, the interim manager and his team developed a digital lead generation campaign on the topic of energy efficiency. The concept provided for the company's customers to be given the opportunity to check the energy consumption of various machines - and then receive offers for energy-saving solutions, which are simultaneously fed into the CRM and transferred to Sales. The highly complex technical implementation was still ongoing at the end of the mandate. During the mandate, however, the interim manager established a different format in which experts advised on energy-saving potential in life streams. This format was very well received by the customers.
Generating new business from SAP data
The interim manager also saw an unnoticed source of business opportunities in the data in SAP and CRM. On the one hand, the untracked but expired service offerings amounted to a double-digit million amount due to low capacities. With the development of automated programs for follow-up, a portion of the otherwise lost offers should be won in the future.
However, the interim manager wanted to track down even more sales opportunities for cross-selling and upselling in the data: through pattern recognition from historical order data in SAP. Simple examples are recurring requests for quotations, missing requests or services after a warranty phase. The interim manager had several promising use cases described by the sales department and analyzed for technical feasibility. Two use cases were initially selected and the internal CRM team began implementation. Completion did not take place until after the end of the mandate.
Digital strategy takes sales and marketing into the 21st century
After eight months of the mandate, the implementation of the digital sales and marketing strategy was well underway. The organization and processes in marketing and sales are fit for the 21st century - and the employees are so empowered that they can successfully continue on their path without support.
One of the challenges in this mandate was the necessary cultural change in marketing and sales in the rather conservative plant engineering sector. Accordingly, the projects sometimes resembled a change project in which the hurdle was not the new technology, but rather the communication and cooperation with the stakeholders in the company.
