GrowThink have worked with a few engineering companies in our time and it always surprises us that in the drive for new sales to new customers/markets there is an often an area overlooked or under-resourced. An area where sales are frequently very profitable.
What is that area? We're talking installed base. The image above is the detail of an actual heat map of installations of machines for a company I've helped out in the past. An installed base that yielded them some of their largest and most profitable projects and led them to recruit some new staff to cover it more effectively.
Now it won't apply to every company but in most a little bit of work looking back can yield some easy wins in the future. If you have some degree of OEM loyalty in your market then those profitable wins can be fairly easy to obtain too.
Is installed base an area you might want to look at more closely? If so read on ...
How might we go about tackling installed base?
Here's some ideas we've found have worked well with others. Ideas if you haven't tried them before I'd highly recommend:
Data gathering & clean-up - if you're lucky you may have all the data in a CRM, ERP or automated system that you can export. If you want to go back further you may have to dig out old paper records. It may even be worth bringing in an intern or temp to help log all this information. It may well be the best investment you make. Typically you can export this to your CRM or at least hold the data in one central location on a master spreadsheet. You'll have lots of data holes and may need to do a bit of cleansing but trust me it'll be worth it.
Visualisation - this is important particularly if you have large volumes of data as it helps you see clusters of equipment or owner locations that might be worth salesperson contact, agency coverage or even placement of a new service centre. If you don't have a CRM system that'll do it for you, a free tool we find useful for this exercise is www.mapsdata.co.uk. Even simple bar charts in Excel by postcode area, country or customer name can throw up some interesting insights.
Analysis & planning - now you can see your data more clearly you can start deriving some insights from the data and drawing up an action plan, e.g. you might identify a cluster of your installations in an area you don't have orders from before. Start thinking about if these machines are likely to exist still and if they are worth tracking down e.g. if they are larger machines that typically yield good spare parts or service then they are probably worth follow up. But how? Let's talk next about access ...
Access - there are various methods of accessing your installed base and it'll depend on the volume of sites, resource, industry and customer data on how best to approach it. Sometimes an e-mail marketing campaign can start things off, or if you have large clusters that justify a sales visit this can work well too. The important thing is to share the data with your sales & marketing teams and focus in on areas that may yield quick wins e.g. where your machines are likely still operating and in an industry or geography where they may need your help.
Update & track - make sure to update your master installed base list with who you've visited and where sales have been gained so you can measure and prove success or failure. This will inform who you chose to access next and possibly what resources are most effective in which territory or market sector. Update the list with new sales too!
Incentivise - I've seen some companies give their aftermarket sales team an incentive (not always £s) to call on suspected hot installations to confirm equipment presence and help to cleanse their data set. These calls even if they don't yield a sale will help build a picture of what for many is their most valuable asset - their installed base.
If you'd like to discuss these ideas in detail we'd be happy to have a chat with you. And don't worry if you don't have the resource to do this type of analysis - we've done it many times before and can seamlessly work with your team to access this potential treasure trove of growth.
Give GrowThink a call on +44 (0)7770 325 252.