Situation
The client, one of the world’s top suppliers to the Oil and Gas industry, needed to understand why it was winning and losing its highest-value deals with customers in Latin America. The client had little insight into which key roles and individuals were influencing decisions, what processes its customers were using to evaluate its solutions, how it was performing against competing providers, or which criteria contributed most heavily to wins and losses.
Methodology
To address these issues, the client’s Sales & Marketing organization engaged Maia to develop and execute a formal strategic accounts Win/Loss Analysis program with its customers in Latin America. To capture granular customer feedback around the complex and highly-technical solution evaluation and sales process, Maia conducted open-ended, in-depth interviews with key customer decision-makers and influencers, and client sales team members in their native languages. The interviews provided detailed insight into how our client’s solutions, value proposition, pricing, and sales approach were being perceived by its customers.
Analysis
Maia analyzed the customer insights and developed customized reports for each deal. After completing a series of deal reviews, Maia produced a strategic summary analysis that identified distinct customer types and behaviors, mapped the customer purchase-decision process and evaluation criteria for each, and provided our client with sales engagement strategies and tactics to align its offerings and value proposition with its customers’ needs and vendor evaluation criteria.
Impact
The client immediately applied our strategic recommendations to win several subsequent multi-million dollar contracts. In addition, Maia identified one distinct customer type that was consistently unlikely to purchase our client’s services. We provided a means to reliably identify these customers at the outset of the sales process, which enabled our client to minimize their investments in these deals and refocus sales resources on more likely wins. Maia also identified a second customer type that was willing to pay a substantial premium for our clients’ solutions, which enabled our client to drive additional revenue and maximize profitability with this group.