In a medium-sized company in the steel processing industry, there had been repeated frictional losses between sales and customers. In his role as division manager at the time, the current interim manager was tasked with reorganizing key parts of the sales department.
Multiple customer support leads to frictional losses in sales
At the start of the project, the company had its own sales team for different product and production areas. It was quite common for a customer to be supplied from several product areas and therefore supported by different salespeople. The management pursued the goal of eliminating the resulting frictional losses and creating a clear and unambiguous relationship/responsibility between the salesperson and customer ("one salesperson for one buyer"). As a positive side effect, the internal workflows in the process organization (coordination with work preparation, production, QM, etc.) were also to be significantly improved.
Clear assignment to segments and customers according to competencies
In the implementation, the interim manager defined customer and market segments with the management and responsible sales employees independently of the previous company organization. The existing customers in the current customer portfolio were assigned to these segments. In the next step, the interim manager created competence profiles for each of the customer and market segments and, in cooperation with the HR department, compared these with the profiles of the sales employees. Following this matrix, sales employees were assigned to segments. In some cases, this also included reassigning sales responsibilities.
Resistance in the sales team overcome through proactive communication
The massive change to the historically grown company organization initially aroused strong internal resistance. The interim manager was gradually able to overcome typical arguments such as "I've been looking after the customer for so long" or "The customer is used to me" through open and transparent communication. He succeeded in convincing most of the sales employees of the benefits and opportunities offered by their new responsibilities.
One of the benefits of the new assignment was that the internal communication channels to other departments such as work preparation and production became simpler and therefore more efficient. On the customer side, the reorganization was welcomed without exception, as the advantage of having a single central point of contact made communication significantly easier.
Market penetration and new customer acquisition significantly improved
The new organization by customer and market segment led to significantly improved market penetration in the individual segments over time, as developments in individual sectors became more transparent and the company's strategic alignment with customer and market needs became much more efficient as a result. This effect also led to a significant increase in new customer acquisition compared to previous years. As a result of the customer- and market-oriented sales organization, the company's sales have doubled from around € 35 million to around € 70 million over a period of five years.
