Trained Sales Team on Category Management
An oilfield service company lost a major strategic tender and strained a key customer relationship after gaps in understanding modern category management processes. McDaniel+Cullen diagnosed the sales process failures, facilitated lessons-learned sessions with the customer, and delivered category management training to senior sales staff — restoring the client relationship and earning the highest training feedback the organization had ever recorded.
Situation
This oilfield service company unexpectedly lost a large tender it had expected to win, straining an important customer relationship in the process. Senior management began to question whether its sales staff fully understood how its customers' modern category management and procurement processes worked.
As major buyers in energy adopt more mature, structured procurement, suppliers who don't understand those processes are at a growing disadvantage. The company risked losing more strategic business unless its sales team learned to engage effectively with sophisticated procurement organizations.
M+C Approach
McDaniel+Cullen reported on the key gaps in the client's sales process, showing how the lost tender was tied to a misunderstanding of how contemporary procurement evaluates suppliers. The team then facilitated a lessons-learned session with the client and key stakeholders from the customer — a step that also began repairing the damaged relationship.
From there, M+C delivered training to the sales organization on how to succeed within the mature category management processes their customers use, bringing the buyer's perspective that M+C's team knows first-hand. The training translated directly into changes to the client's sales plans and process.
Results
The client required all senior sales staff to attend the M+C training, modified its sales plans and process based on the learnings, and restored the relationship with the key customer.
Key Outcomes
- Root-cause analysis linking the lost tender to procurement-process gaps
- Strained customer relationship restored through a facilitated lessons-learned session
- Category management training delivered to all senior sales staff
- Sales plans and processes updated from the engagement's learnings
- Highest-rated sales training the organization had received
Client Feedback
"Our strategic accounts had lost a significant tender and damaged our relationship with a key customer. M+C showed us how that loss was associated with our gap in understanding how contemporary procurement processes work within our clients. They trained our strategic account managers on how to improve our sales methodology to enhance our chance of success. During the process M+C helped repair our relationship with the customer. The feedback on the training was excellent, the best sales training I have ever received.