A business services firm whose
core offering had become com-
moditized needed to find something
to compete on other than price.

CASE 4.

BACK

Challenge

After ten years of steady growth, a business services firm found that it started losing clients for the first time in its history. At the same time, new business was becoming harder to win and was being signed
at persistently lower margins.

Complication

With the sales team frantically focused on trying
to expand the pipeline and cut costs to be able to compete, we were brought in to identify alternate pricing mechanisms.

What We Did

We cut through the noise and identified that root cause of the problem was that the firm had concentrated all its resources in two things: sales and operations, leaving no one focused on safeguarding existing accounts and monitoring strategic changes in client needs. We helped them catch up on their client insight by conducting a series of client interviews and a detailed analysis of industry trends. Then we designed an account review process to help them continue gathering these insights on an ongoing basis. The process provided structure and guidance to help account managers elicit and understand client needs and feed them into the development of future solutions.

Results

The project helped the organization become much more attuned to client needs, and account managers are able to convey the broader business value of their offering rather than focusing on price. Stronger processes around capturing and managing client insights allow the team to proactively develop products that meet emerging client needs instead of scrambling to cobble something together when accounts are at risk.

BACK

CASE 4.

site design | illustration: Karen Justl

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