Background
The client is a regional Balkans distributor and retailers who has been in the business of Electronics for a long time. Due to market dynamics and consolidation in the market, the client aspired to further intensify its relationship with the Chinese manufacturer by expanding its partnership into new products and new business model concepts. The client approached XPR Consulting to guide the discussion and the their sales team into developing the joint business & marketing plan for the new product introductions in the market.
Our intervention
The intervention consisted of the following key steps
- Mapping the market potential,
- Segmentation & Targeting,
- Designing the market entry strategy, and
- Developing the business case.
Throughout the evaluation of the market potential, information on the trends in the market, the regional and local market dynamics, competitor analysis, and product portfolio analysis were performed.
In doing so, desk research and in-depth interviews with people familiar with the industry were used.
By collecting this information, the Project acquired the needed knowledge to sustain the following decisions.
Segmentation and Targeting was conducted having a multi-tier distributors approach through a bottom-up process. As a result, the Project gained a deep understanding on the strong points of competitors within the value chain and identified several opportunities were the client could penetrate the market and gain a strategic position.
Developing the business case and mapping the payback time
- How profitable the market?
- Where are the growth opportunities in the channel? Who to partner with?
- What do we need to do to become successful in the segment?
Mapping needed services, resources, logistics, team and tools. - What is the payback time for this new investment?
To tap into the opportunities within the value chain, the Project needed to outline the market entry strategy. Topics such as the internal capabilities and capacities to go direct-to-customer and/or have an indirect channel strategy were evaluated. In the indirect channel, the Project set a list of potential partners which could be interesting to partner with. Furthermore, services to these potential partners were outlined, such as Commercial Support, Training and Development, SLAs, logistics, and tools to support. As a final output, the Project presented a short-term, medium-term and long-term perspective for market entry and new customer acquisition.
At last, in collaboration with the global manufacturer, we facilitated multiple workshop discussions to co-finalize the business case and the marketing plan for the client. The key results of this stage consisted on the understanding of the working capital needed, payback time for the new investment, and key initiatives to be undertaken by the parties to initiate the project implementation.
Joint business & marketing plan
- Accessing the partners resource center
- Joint discussions based on previous experiences at global and local level
- Mapping alternate routes to ensure satisfactory lead time, prices and Service Level Agreements.
results
The client signed a 2-year agreement with the manufacturer, received a strong new business initiation package consisting of price discounts, marketing material support and commercial training at the manufacturers premises for their team and their partners.