A small 40+ year old manufacturer of Spectrophotometers that had about the best product in the world came to me asking for help. It was a family run business and were set in their ways. They were not losing money, they had a good “LifeStyle”; but decided it was time to grow and scale.
Problems
- Been in business for 43 years the Founder was still active but in total control
- Good IP but not leveraged for growth
- 13,000 Contacts in their database but very few re-orders
- Pipeline of new product was very short – not enough innovation
- Employee morale was low and too many people leaving
- Revenue was on a downward spiral
- Fundamental Weakness — They DO NOT know how to sell
I was initially asked to come and do an assessment. Which I did over a 2 week period. I interviewed all 20 employees, a few customers and spoke with a few of their key partners and vendors who were part of their supply chain.
Opportunities for growth:
- Get the right people in the right seat of the bus
- Improve leadership and get more professional employees with a lot more experience
- Make the Customer Service a profit center
- Fund R&D and increase innovation and new product development
- Develop a marketing campaign
- Develop a structured sales process
Process Improvement
- Improved the go to market strategy and implement an Education based marketing campaign.
- Developed a structured sales process and trained staff on how to follow-it
- Improved inventory management and cleaned up old inventory which improved our credit rating with the bank and gave us more operating capital.
- Reduce delivery time from 120+ days to 45-60 days. Which also increase cash-flow and gave us more operating capital=
In conclusion:
- Tapped into the genius of staff that had a lot of experience
- The sales cycle dropped to 60 Days or less from 120 Days
- They closed a higher % of sales opportunities
- Increase conversations from existing customers and new customers
- Grew the company 60% in top line revenue in 18 months
