Challenge    I work as the North East territory relationship manager for a jewelry wholesaler since the beginning of 2016.  The company began building its reputation in the late 23s by delivering the fastest made-to-order jewelry  services in the local market. Since then we had a rapid growth as a result of responding the customer needs  faster than any other competitor, with an outstanding quality, which eventually led us become the industry  leader. However, in 2006, business started showing signs of decline. While millennials were developing an  entirely different buying behavior than their predecessors, production overseas as well as the online giants  were forcing the local industry to push the prices down. As a local manufacturer, we were indeed facing a  major challenge. But there was even a bigger picture we didn’t see; the real problem that prompted the  recess: lack of “in-person” connection with our business partners.    Selection    Although we launched a few programs here and there and did some internal changes to our workflow we  weren’t anywhere near improvement. So, we decided to tackle the challenge by sending someone on the  road, as part of the Learning Launch method. This test was scheduled to last for six months    Application    Followed by my promotion as the territory relationship manager, we decided that it’s the best if I take the lead  on visiting some of these retail stores as my six years of background in various departments within the  company would be a huge advantage. For almost a decade, nobody had ever put a face with them. Lack of  human connection clearly had brought the business down more than we could ever imagine of.     In six months, I visited almost about 250 retail jewelry stores. We did not have to wait until the end of this test  run to see the results. My visits had already started diverting some of the business we lost. I was getting  considerable number of projects while I was on the road. Surely visits were not the only measures taken. They  were followed by organized follow up calls and most importantly actions on managing the workflow between  the sales and production teams. Having said that, at the end of Q3, we ran the reports to assess the impact of  these visits. Figures with at least more than half these stores were up!    Insight    Management resisted to form a sales team for a long while, believing that our wholesale business does not  require customer visits. It was assumed that focusing on the bigger clients and growing the business with them  was profitable enough while a decent customer service department could handle the everyday business.  Mom-and-pop stores were heavily neglected. But these little stores are the pillars of the industry. They can be  very fragile. A tiny impression of neglect can easily push them to cooperate with other vendors. Once they are  out of the picture, and something goes wrong with the bigger clients, downsizing or even a shutdown is  inevitable. Management was too late to take action. But thankfully our learning launch period yielded some  great results and company started investing into its sales team. Now we have at least one person assigned for  each territory and they are already on the road getting some great results.    Approach    Leaning Launch was definitely a successful tool. But we need to go deeper to understand the territorial buying  behaviors so that we can gather ideas on how we can deliver solutions for different cultures. So, we might try  the Mind Mapping tool next time.

