The key challenges for businesses selling complex or technical products and how to address them.

1. www.mercuri.co.uk
For more information contact:
Tel: +44 (0)7725 955171 or email
Iain-harvey@mercuri.co.uk
THE CHALLENGE
OF WINNING,
GROWING &
KEEPING
CUSTOMERS
IN TECHNICAL SALES
A Mercuri International White Paper Page 1 (3)
Businesses typically seek significant, sustainable and
profitable organic growth.
Delivering this growth has never been easy and in
today’s highly competitive environment is more difficult
than ever before.
The field of technical sales is wide and varied but
typically includes technology, engineering, medical
devices, oil & gas, civil engineering, infrastructure,
energy and aerospace.
Businesses in these sectors offer solutions that are
complex, predominantly project driven and often have a
long sales cycle.
This paper looks at some of the opportunities and
challenges facing these organisations.
It highlights key challenges and opportunities and
indicates some of the ways organisations and
individuals can achieve the success they seek.
Increasing globalisation has seen a shift in the areas of
highest demand to the developing economies whilst
continuing to have to satisfy existing markets.
This expanded customer base has seen demand
become more fragmented which has necessitated wider
product offerings with more additional options.
At the same time the demand for value added services
has grown meaning suppliers are moving towards a
‘one stop shop’ offering, or at the very least a higher
level of integration with partners in the supply chain.
Taking advantage of the opportunities this changing
landscape offers is made more difficult by uncertainty in
key areas:
Fluctuations in currency rates and pricing and
availability of raw material and components make
pricing and profitability hard to manage and predict.
Political intervention in a number of forms such as
protectionism and regulation, with environmental
arguably having the biggest impact.
Meeting the Challenge of
Business Growth
A New World Order

2. Winning growing and keeping customers Page 2 (3)
In technical sales. CONT.
www.mercuri.co.uk
For more information contact:
Tel: +44 (0)7725 955171 or email
Iain-harvey@mercuri.co.uk
1. Managing Sector Issues
The collapse in the price of oil is the clearest example
of the risk in having too narrow a sector focus. Our
clients in that sector tell us that customer capex and
opex have been severely restricted, if not cancelled
altogether. This has increased competition, depressed
priced and led to huge overcapacity. Dependency on
one sector requires the customer base to be as wide as
possible and this should be built when times are good.
2. Changing Buyer Behaviour
Many buying decisions are made before meeting the
sales person and often the opportunity to engage is
limited or even non-existent where the main supplier
selection comes from a tender or RFP. Early
engagement as high and wide as possible with decision
makers enable tenders and technical specs to be
shaped and the influence of purchasing minimised.
3. Managing Distribution Channels
Distributors and agents can be a very effective route to
market, especially in new territories and sectors,
however their competing priorities need to be
understood and managed. The highest possible level of
incentivisation combined with technical, product and
marketing support is required to ensure they promote
our products and solutions before anyone else’s.
4. Knowing Who Does What
The variety of job titles in sales organisations is often
mind boggling: Sales Engineer, Product Specialist,
Account Manager, Internal Sales, Field Sales,
Technical Sales…the list goes on. Keeping the
structure simple and clearly defining individual
responsibility and accountability speeds up the sales
process and, most importantly, makes it clear to the
customer who does what.
5. Optimising talent
Attracting and retaining the best people is often cited by
our clients as one of the biggest challenges they face.
In Technical Sales the problem often stems from trying
to turn the best technical people into successful sales
people when in reality the skills sets required can be
vastly different. Being methodical and analytical can be
important for technicians and engineers so expecting
them to be entrepreneurial and adaptable, as the best
sales people often are, leads to underperformance,
frustration and ultimately causes them to leave
These challenges and opportunities are real, significant
and difficult to address; but the prizes from addressing
them successfully are great. Based on our experience
of the most successful organisations, combined with
strong and transferrable approaches used in other
sectors, we highlight the following areas to concentrate
on:
1. Mind the Gap
Make sure you understand and agree where your
people are before you start to make improvements.
Then make sure that what you are looking to improve
will really have a positive effect on your business. This
will save money, time and reputation. As one business
leader put it “We have based too many of our
development decisions on guesswork and individual
opinions. For the first time we are basing decisions on
data and agreement.”
2. Use what you’ve got
Many of the businesses we work with already have
good tools and approaches in place. They do not
always need to develop something brand new but to
make better and more consistent use of the resources
already available. Only use the new when you need to
but then use it boldly.
5 Challenges in Technical Sales
5 Ways to
overcome the challenges

3. Winning growing and keeping customers Page 3 (3)
In technical sales. CONT.
www.mercuri.co.uk
For more information contact:
Tel: +44 (0)7725 955171 or email
Iain-harvey@mercuri.co.uk
3. Innovative delivery
Deliver development using innovative approaches that
make the most of peoples’ time. The use of
approaches such as blended learning, bite-size
modules, simulations, experiential learning and live
case based events can make a huge difference in
optimising time and RoI.
4. Build implementation from the
start
Implementation is the difficult bit in any development
programme, but it is vital. Plan the implementation early
on. It is much more cost-effective and produces a
much better result to build it in rather than “retro-fit”.
5. Focus on durability
Plan ways to ensure any changes become part of
business as usual.
Sales leaders need to be engaged and involved from
the outset. They should be ready and able to coach in
the field, mentor and give feedback to secure
behavioural and therefore results change.
Be prepared to measure the change and wherever
possible document impact and Return on Investment.
Conclusions
We trust that this paper will have stimulated your
thinking – confirming some points and challenging you
to rethink in others.
If this paper has resonated with you then Mercuri
International is well-positioned to diagnose, design,
deliver and deploy with you to ensure durability of
improved sales results.
3 Examples of how
manufacturers benefitted from
working with Mercuri
Example 1
Manufacturer of agricultural
machines
• Market Share growth from 33.7% to
42.2%
• Return on Sales growth from 4% to
6.2%
Example 2
Manufacturer of medical devices
• An increase in Sales of £1.4 Million
• in the Medical Division
• £700k of extra profit in the
• Diagnostic division
Example 3
Manufacturer of Aero engines
• An increase of 117% in campaign
win rate over a 3 year period