Case Study: National Sales and Marketing Telco Division

Reverse decline in sales for a national telco business

Business Profile

A national division of a global telecommunications major with a focus on Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (SME) as well as Small Office, Home Office (SoHo) customers. With sales revenues of several hundred million Euros and a large multi-channel sales and marketing operation.

Business Challenge

The main challenges were to:

  • halt the decline in sales revenues within an extremely short time frame of three months
  • go on to grow revenues and profitability in line with the sponsor’s highly ambitious goals for the SME market
  • open up new channels, such as online

What we did

In order to meet these challenges we:

  • deployed an interim manager as acting Vice President of the Division
  • restructured the divisional leadership team and focussed them on specific operational goals
  • established a sales task force to prioritise short term “fixes” in demand generation and sales capture
  • in parallel created another task force to create an iconic proposition – in record time – to win a major share of the market
  • created a new online operation from scratch
  • opened up new distribution channels with a series of national channel agreements
  • established new incentive schemes

Business Impact

The sales task force was highly successful in reversing the previous decline in sales, and indeed came in ahead of target. This provided a breathing space for the new “iconic” proposition to be developed and launched. Key achievements were:

  • sales decline reversed and target achieved (converting a month on month decline of 7% to a growth of 23%)
  • a new “iconic” proposition was launched, going on to win the industry’s “Innovation of the Year” award. The proposition became the most highly successful and profitable product in the company’s history.
  • a new online b2b channel was developed and launched in a fifth of the time originally envisaged improving cost of sale significantly
  • costs of the division were reduced by careful management of expenditures

Testimonial

“I liked what they did, and how they did it. It was also fun: the energy was infectious and enabled us to drive change in a way we just couldn’t have done. It’s now time for us to think about another “iconic” proposition again!” – MD, European Telecoms Enterprise