Marketing & Sales
L.E.K. Consulting helps companies optimize their marketing and sales strategy to drive profitable growth. We do this by drawing together insights from your customers, markets, business environments and internal organization. Then we model the economic implications of these insights and compare them with what’s working for other companies. From there, we work with management to embed change in the organization’s practices and processes. The result? Value-creating commercial strategy that is unique to your business — right down to individual products, programs and customer segments.
Our marketing and sales capabilities span the entire commercial journey.
Position, develop and invest in your brands to differentiate and drive growth. You’ll gain a clearer perspective of which customers a brand (or portfolio of brands) is serving. You’ll also understand each brand’s points of difference better, acquiring the insight to grow share, improve positioning and build clearer targeting of customer segments. All this points to higher revenues and profits from improved alignment with customers and distribution channels.
Increase customer traction by providing the seamless experience they want. This involves grasping customer needs across your portfolio of brands, products and channels — and, through this, defining the important characteristics of customer experience. In return, see higher profitability and increased loyalty by focusing on strategies to address pain points and create customer advocacy. You’ll also improve your ability to serve targeted customer segments and develop differentiated customer experiences with high return on investment.
Bring a customer focus to developing new products and services. Assume a customer-centric lens as we develop new offerings. A key part of this is developing an understanding of customer needs — both met and unmet — from your own product offerings plus those of your competitors in order to identify new opportunities.
You’ll increase revenues and reduce the risk of failed product launches. You’ll also surface untapped product and service opportunities, and improve efficiency and speed to market, all via our customer-centric approach to innovation.
Maximize overall profit while increasing margins and/or market share. Getting pricing right is one of the most critical commercial decisions for any business. It can lead to significant increases in top-line results; the bottom-line effect is even greater. Our approach allows you to develop the optimal initial pricing framework and sales incentives and to see ongoing benefits from an analytical pricing framework informed by customers, market conditions and the competitive environment.
Make the most of your channels to market by being in the right places in the optimal way. An adroit strategy is essential to winning in a rapidly evolving, digitizing channel landscape. We can help you develop this optimal strategy through an understanding of the customers’ journey and their likes and dislikes, combined with channel requirements, incentivization levers and cost to serve. The outcomes will include greater reach, strategic differentiation between channels and outsized share in growing channels — all translating to more revenue and profit.
Speak to the right customers in the right way at the right time. The marketing landscape is changing more rapidly than at any time in the recent past, with digital, social and mobile technologies making traditional models of engagement obsolete. To develop marketing strategies that will direct your resources more effectively, we combine our commercial expertise in advanced data analytics with a game plan that gets your message in front of the audiences you need to reach. You’ll stimulate sales and strengthen your market positioning, thanks to a strategic view of the marketing mix that ties in more effectively with sales and product strategy.
Go-to-market and commercial organization
Define the optimal go-to-market strategy and commercial organization that will deliver against revenue growth or profit improvement objectives. In both nascent and mature markets, companies need to make complex choices around their go-to-market strategies, considering both direct and indirect models. In nascent markets, the relevant channel infrastructure may not be available, and a business may need to invest independently or in partnerships to build new routes to market. In mature markets, the distribution landscape may be evolving or consolidating. A business needs to select carefully the go-to-market and commercial models that would effectively and efficiently get its products or services to the customers, while allowing the business to capture the maximum value across the distribution chain.
Reinvigorate revenue growth and optimize sales and marketing spend. Commercial Excellence comprises a series of steps that an organization can take to define its target customers and plan the delivery of its value proposition to them, supported by excellent sales and marketing execution. Commercial Excellence is key for businesses that seek to establish a new go-to-market model to enter new categories or markets, and also for established businesses that aim to gain a competitive advantage and target incremental growth in mature, highly competitive categories. In our experience, Commercial Excellence initiatives can yield concrete financial benefits in terms of revenue growth and/or substantial SG&A savings through optimized resource allocation.
Customer targeting and value proposition
Identify the highest-priority customer segments to target, and define value propositions tailored to the needs of those segments. Many companies struggle with how best to understand, segment and prioritize customers — and how to optimize the economics, from both a provider and a customer perspective — leading to a “one size fits all” approach for allocating resources and investment. We rely on external research and rigorous quantitative analysis of sales data to inform customer groupings and determine the appropriate segments to pursue with the right value proposition. Our customer targeting capability provides clients with a clear focus on the “best fit” segments where the business can drive revenue and profit growth.
Improve and accelerate sales performance by determining the right processes and enablers to maximize the commercial team’s effectiveness. To realize sales gains, sales and marketing processes need to align with the customer strategy and go-to-market model throughout the sales cycle. Sales enablers, such as compensation scheme for the team, key performance indicators, systems and tools, and training programs, must also be established to ensure that the sales team has the best support. We advise and support management teams on establishing the right infrastructure to root out sales productivity drains, align incentives and ultimately drive sales growth.
