Case studies
Our case studies are real examples of how Winsales can help you grow your sales and develop your business. We selected them from many others to showcase a variety of approaches and strategies tailored to each company's unique characteristics, challenges, markets, and objectives.
Our services are customized to meet your needs and specific requirements, whether you are a startup, an SME, or a large company.
Enhance value proposition to reposition the company in the market
Industry:
Airport baggage handling systems
Company's objectives:
In the context of merging two non-profitable entities, senior management set an objective to achieve profitability within two years.
Challenges:
Following a restructuring of its organisation, optimisation of its processes, and the introduction of a new MRP system, the company became highly efficient but still struggled to reach financial breakeven. Profits remained elusive.
The medium-sized company provided turn-key baggage handling systems to European and African airports, facing competition from smaller firms on minor projects and larger corporations on complex ones.
A deeper analysis revealed a misalignment between the company's capabilities and market expectations. The company lacked competitiveness and agility in small projects and did not possess the necessary competencies and capacity for complex projects. This misalignment, coupled with a lack of a distinct market image, hindered the firm from winning large projects that generated sustainable margins.
Actions:
We shifted the sales and proposals strategy from the lowest cost approach to a value-added proposition, implementing the following actions:
- Creation of Controls and ICT Department: internalising these activities allowed the company to develop standards, reduce costs, and gain control over the intelligence of the handling systems. This enabled the company to support clients throughout all project phases, up to testing and commissioning, ensuring suppliers did not dominate the process.
- Launch of a new product: we introduced the Destination Coded Vehicle (DCV) system, a unique product that showcased the company's engineering ingenuity and capabilities, establishing its name globally.
- Introduction of new engineering yools and services: simulations and animations were introduced to enhance the design of handling systems.
To align with and promote the enhanced value proposition, we developed a new integrated tender proposals process: this process focused on delivering the best value rather than the lowest cost, offering increased services and expertise to clients.
We modernisation of the offer and marketing materials, we updated their format and content including detailed technical and functional descriptions, simulations, animations, and presentations.
Outcome:
These enhancements to the value proposition successfully established the company as a turn-key system integrator known worldwide.
The company secured major multi-million contracts with significant airports, including Luton (DCV), Manchester, Helsinki, and Paris, achieving senior management's profit objectives within the target timeline.
Increase production capacity
to meet growing market demand
Industry:
Industrial magnets production
Company's objectives:
The company experienced a significant surge in demand for magnets, requiring delivery within tight deadlines. This presented an incredible opportunity to increase sales with existing clients and attract new long-term customers.
The market showed great potential for substantial sales growth and business expansion in the medium to long term.
Unfortunately, the company lacked the capacity to meet this demand. Senior management sought immediate solutions to fulfill short-term requirements and developed plans to drastically increase production capacity for sustained growth in the long run.
Challenges:
To support long-term business growth, plans were initiated to build a new factory equipped with advanced machinery and processes designed to increase throughput.
In the short term, the challenge was to immediately boost capacity to prevent clients from turning to competitors, secure deals with new customers urgently needing quantities, and lay the groundwork for future expansion.
The company struggled to find a solution, as the existing factory was already operating 24/7 with no spare production equipment available and no possibility of acquiring new machines quickly enough to meet client deadlines.
Actions:
We focused on optimizing the use of the company's internal resources, processes, and staff rather than seeking external solutions, such as potential partnerships with competitors.
The manufacturing of magnets involves four main steps, culminating in a grinding process. At the end of the grinding stage, operators visually inspect each magnet to eliminate those with cracks.
After thoroughly analyzing the entire 24/7 production operation, we identified that all manufacturing steps had excess capacity, except for the final grinding process, which was the bottleneck.
The pace of the grinding machines, as well as the presses and furnaces used in earlier steps, was set to match the capacity of the inspectors. Additionally, changing the grinding wheels required about 24 hours, leaving operators with no magnets to inspect during this downtime.
The solution became clear: set all machines to full speed to maximize magnet production and build up a stockpile to be inspected during the grinding wheel replacement downtime.
The company also incentivized employees to inspect stocked parts at home voluntarily, offering salary bonuses based on the quantities inspected.
Simultaneously, we implemented new technical solutions to speed up the drying process and reduce the number of broken magnets during this stage.
Outcome:
The solution was a success, resulting in a 33% increase in production capacity and 25% boost in annual revenues even before the new factory became operational.
This allowed the company to retain and expand business with existing clients, attract new clients in different industries, and develop sustainable, steady growth for years to come.
Enhanced production capabilities and strategic capital investment significantly boosted sales.
New sales approach
leveraging group capabilities to secure more and larger projects
Industry:
Airport baggage handling
Company's objectives:
The medium-size company was acquired by a leading market group that was not present in the EMEA market. The group tasked the senior management team with turning around the business to make it profitable and increase its presence and sales in its historical market regions.
Challenges:
The company specialised in providing turnkey baggage handling systems primarily to EMEA airports.
An analysis of the situation quickly revealed significant issues: a lack of sales and proposal leadership, demotivated teams, no robust processes, and no proactive client relationships. Sales activities were minimal, with the company waiting passively for clients to release tender specifications before preparing offers.
This approach resulted in a critical situation with no significant orders and no tangible future prospects.
Actions:
Over the course of a year, we implemented several changes:
- Sales approach: we shifted from a "bidding factory" strategy to a proactive collaboration approach. The sales team developed strong, long-term relationships with clients, offering information and support well before projects and bids were released.
- Visibility: leveraging the group's capabilities, we increased the company's visibility through exhibitions, an updated website, press coverage, client visits, and tours of the group's demo and R&D centre.
- Portfolio expansion: we expanded the company's offerings by incorporating services, products, and solutions from sister companies within the group, such as O&M, AS/RS, tray systems, emulation, IT systems, and self-checking solutions.
- Process implementation: new processes were introduced, including weekly sales and proposals meetings, bid/no-bid gate reviews, project cost reviews, and market analysis with future project identification alerts.
- Cost reduction: bid cost reviews led to significant changes in project delivery to reduce costs. For example, we subcontracted installation and site management locally, implemented integrated design and operational tools, and emulated systems before on-site deployment.
- CRM system: the group CRM system was introduced to streamline operations.
- Pipeline development: we built a robust pipeline using information from the sales team and market analysis.
- Marketing modernisation: we modernised the marketing documentation to present a more dynamic and ambitious company. This included updated presentations, brochures, videos, detailed technical and functional offers, and RoI data.
Outcome:
Within a year, the company successfully met the group's objectives, securing major multi-million contracts with key airports in France, the UK, and Canada.
The new sales approach, enhanced group portfolio, and implemented changes led to sustained success and improved sales performance.
The sales and proposals team regained their motivation, feeling that their actions and leadership initiatives were meaningful and effective.
Winsales assists B2B startups, SMEs, and large corporations in crafting and executing sales and business development strategies. We help develop efficient sales and proposal teams and organizations, ultimately delivering winning proposals to clients.
Email address:
contact@winsales.me
Phone number:
+44 (0)7920 230 885
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