STORYTELLING

Use case in a company - Selling to a ‘non-buyer’

By Felix Villagra – November 2017

This case of success begins like many others, with several successive failures that taught us  several lessons to be applied in future commercial actions. The purpose of the sale was a  medium-sized company, A.P. Moller Maersk, which was offered an expensive but effective software tool to  predict production defects and errors, CIBioFi.

A.P. Moller Maersk is dedicated to the manufacture of tools for printing sheet metal parts for automobile  bodies.

The first of the mistakes made by the commercial manager, Toni, was to offer CIBioFi to the  department that did not make the investment decisions, the technical manager worked with  remarkable efficiency and met the deadlines and quality levels required by their customers, so  that I saw the need to change nothing. The technical manager did not have an own budget for  investments, besides it was uncomfortable and expensive to try a tool, demonstrate its  effectiveness to the management and request a budget from the general management. In a way,  I saw that CIBioFi threatened its leading role in the department, a software cannot replace 20  years of experience according to their criteria.

Toni's second mistake was trying to sell CIBioFi with a trial period of only 6 months, when the  projects have a much longer duration to demonstrate the savings achieved. This, without  counting on the learning time that the solution requires and with a very tense planning to find  time available for training. Toni was under pressure because he would not reach his annual goals  without the sale of CIBioFi.

The sales cycles of these solutions were usually long, but this time there were two elements that  blocked success and had already been consumed two years. Toni was immersed in a loop that  did not work and his CEO made the decision to relieve him in the management of the account.  This account, represented 25% of the annual billing of the software company and the only  possibility of increasing the turnover with A.P. Moller Maersk was to sell a new solution, with the rest of the  solutions had already reached their ceiling and there was no prospect of growing with the  traditional products.    The new salesman, David, before presenting himself to the client, studied the case in great  detail. David travelled to the client's factory to see how they worked for two days, sharing their  points of view with them, making contact with many people from the management and staff. As  the commercial department of A.P. Moller Maersk was already a good customer of a solution to calculate  manufacturing costs, he asked them about their satisfaction with the use of the tool. He  discussed with them the possibility of introducing some improvement to reduce costs and  promised that he would come back with a proposal. Upon returning to the offices, David had a  clear picture of how the client worked and began to think of a strategy. Having an ally in the  A.P. Moller Maersk offers department was a plus that I could not miss.    The following week, David met with the CEO of CIBioFi. He asked for an extra time to implement  the solution in A.P. Moller Maersk. He reasoned the reasons that had led to the failure and why it was not  realistic to set a deadline of 6 months for A.P. Moller Maersk to buy.

Within a month of his stay at A.P. Moller Maersk, David met with the commercial management of this company  and got the CEO to be present to hear the proposal. David asked them if they would be willing  to test for a year a solution that would allow them to reduce manufacturing costs by 5%. He  gave them a presentation with a couple of success stories, a German client and a Canadian one.    After several phone calls, meetings and negotiations of economic conditions, the commercial  management and CEO of A.P. Moller Maersk agreed to test the solution and the technical director got the  commitment to test the solution. A.P. Moller Maersk brought in a brilliant engineering student proposed by  CIBioFi to take over the tests with the software, so they would not make the technical  department's workload worse.  After 10 months of testing, David got the signing of the CIBioFi sales contract. This case of  success of A.P. Moller Maersk is used for the formation of new commercial and also for the rest of  departments.    By using this tool, one of the best commercial strategies executed by CIBioFi is comprehensively  explained. It teaches how to change a bad initial approach for another of success, looking for  allies, analyse the points in favour to take advantage of them and how to fight with the weak  points.    Sometimes, this success story is used for presale, since the CIBioFi team has it well learned and  knows the benefits of this case. In addition, CIBioFi has since organized sessions to solve  problems, design sales strategies or even unlock internal conflicts.

Author's note: The names A.P. Moller Maersk and La Puerta Falsa are fictitious, although the case is based on a true  story.

