How to overcome odds to secure landmark orders for your products

www.blueocean-consulting.in

They were tough days for me. My sales were not picking up. For the first time in my current job I had been assigned a sales target. I was also assigned two sales territories which had a huge potential.

I was in to industrial marketing for our products that mainly fit into process automation. Our products were also the most critical part of the process. I was brimming with enthusiasm, longing to do something different on my job which was not done earlier.

The competition was tough. There were companies that offered similar products as ours at 20 - 30%below our best prices. How much ever we try, we would lose out to competition on the prices. Besides we never compromised on the pricing as well as on commercial terms. We were very clear that our products will not only give us our market presence but also meet our financial goals. I later realised that this approach was indeed very noble. Not just trade prices for market share. How do we overcome this and become successful?

I wanted to achieve the impossible. That which the product line had failed to achieve in its ten year existence. I felt that it was a challenging task but not impossible.

First, I decided to focus on key strengths of our product. Y two years of working on the costing of the product line had given me a deep understanding of the minute details of the product. Besides, our product I had understood the technicalities of the competition and the way it affected their costing.

Then, I focussed deeply on the market that could yield results for me. I toured those regions interacting with the concerned branch managers closely. I met a huge number of customers frequently, especially the customers who could leverage my efforts with large volume business or those who could influence such business.

My touring intensity had shot up and one such instance of a visit to a customer when I was sick with temperature. Another, one I had to live on just fruits for a whole day when I visited a remote customer. I enjoyed every bit of those experiences, never ?in a mood to give up.

Another obvious point I have to necessarily make here. In a shop floor that had five different product line. All other products, but mine were flag bearers of the organisation. The other products were high value products weighing in ratio of 1:100. If one unit of my product was between 1 and 10, those products were between 100 and 1000 in terms of size and cost. Hence not only the odds were against eternally but internally my product line was not getting much attention.

I would like to cite three instances here :

1.?With-in a few months of taking over the responsibility of sales in two demographic regions for our product line, I sensed a prospect who was a big industrial conglomerate, manufacturing steel, the top steel producer in India. Alarge chunk of automated control products were required. The order was substantially valued at a high price. Being a reputed customer, it added to the importance. I engaged with the concerned branch manager closely. I toured to meet this customer twice.?Finally, landed up with this order. The efforts of my bss and the Branch Manager who put in tremendous efforts will not go unnoticed. I had broken the jinx that my product line cannot boast of high value orders and more so such high value from reputed customers. It was indeed a task for me that I turned over successfully.

I felt motivated by this success, achieving what was considered as impossible in the 13 years that my product line operated.

2.?Then came an opportunity in the form a requirement of my products for a power plant. The customer was just in my backyard to say how close that it was. We used to always lose orders from this customer only on the basis of prices. Our competition used to quote low prices that we could never match. The customer knew this very well. They had many times spoken about this to me whenever I called them or met them. But this time I was determined to convert this positively. In fact like a true marketing person, I go about each order with utmost dedication to win it. ?I persistently followed up for this. Then came the day of finalisation. We only had to match the price and the customer was clear that they being a public sector cannot place an order at premium. My boss was with me for the finalisation session with the customer. The customer had kept the other vendor waiting and offered us a price to match theirs and take the order this time. Being a power plant order the value was substantial and would have added a feather in our cap. My boss started interacting with his boss for the finalisation. His boss (my super boss), the father like figure of this product line in the company refuse to budge on the prices. We lost it and the customer confirmed the finalisation to the competitor who was waiting. After all this exercise in failure it was 8.30 pm in the night, when I and my boss stepped out of the customer’s place.

Astonishingly, the next day morning in the usual mode, reported the happenings of the previous evening to the Plant Head.?My plant head said that it was an important order and we should not have left it the way we did. He immediately gave consent to take the order at the offered price and speak to the customer immediately. By then the customer informed it is too late and they have confirmed the order to the competitor and cannot reverse it. These are the heart breaking moments that one has to go through in Marketing and especially in sales career.

3.?Then in another few month’s came up one more opportunity to breach a INR 10 million barrier (in a single order) which involved the country’s reputed consultant and another reputed OEM, both large reputed conglomerates in the country. I, my boss and our concerned Branch Manager with the experience of the freak loss of the earlier opportunity, maintained complete secrecy of this order till the end within our organisation. It was the icing on the cake. We did not drop the prices for this order. The largest order till then for my product line and I was a part of this. It felt so proud to get this order. I left this organisation a few month’s later.?My boss to had left a little earlier than me, much due to the inconsistency in supporting the teams. ?During the protocols of technical approvals it dawned that some of the items order were not in the approved list of the consultant. But it was late for anyone to modify. In fact, we were asking for this approval for years together with this nationally reputed consultant who had not given it. It happened that the consultant had to give and approval out of obligation. Another thing that weighed in favour of us for this approval in this order is that the OEM was also an equally large concern who worked for us to get this approval.

That particular financial year, I had exceeded my overall order booking target by 60%. It was indeed a great feeling that I left the organisation for a better opportunity within a few months after this.

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