Outsourced HR strategies

THE CHALLENGE

This client was pursuing a fast customer acquisition and growth strategy in a market with no public price reference. To achieve a high conversion ratio and optimise sales acquisition costs, field sales teams were given a high degree of autonomy on pricing, with no specific guidance beyond price floors and an escalation process. In addition, competitors started offering cheap online deals. As a result, the workload for sales management to approve prices had become out of control. The client was seeking to reflect on how to refresh price guidelines.

OUR SOLUTION

An audit of the pricing strategy, including analysis of field sales practices, customer insights, past transactional data analysis and market expert interviews led to the conclusion that price and discount grids were both outdated and wrongly used in the field. Initially, a segmentation work helped to better align pricing and market penetration strategies. After assessing price differentiation potential and rationale in the market, we designed a quotation tool to support efficient but accurate price decisions. Factors including cost to serve, service needs and competitiveness of the pitch were considered. Lastly, we worked on product packaging and price bundling to provide customers with choice and allow the sales team to quickly adapt their pricing.

RESULTS

New customer segmentation, pricing tool, validation process and KPIs to allow management to continue achieving fast growth and optimising sales acquisition cost, whilst seizing an opportunity to improve the profitability of new sales by over 3%.