Laura’s Winning Ideas

Marketing, Business Development and Proposal Teams have an interesting vantage point in organizations.

We see emerging opportunities quite often, and I encourage marketing teams to help translate profit opportunities to management.

True Story: I was sent by a VP to squash a group that was “wasting” their time pursuing contracts too small for their expertise.

When we got the group leader and a couple of the members together for a chat, I found a group of engineers who were operating as a swat team, sweeping into plants with a particular problem that could shut down an entire plant in hours. With one phone call from a distressed plant manager, they’d drive through the night, conduct on-site tests, design a solution and then get on the phones with the authorities to negociate permission to continue operating while the fix was implemented under their supervision.

This team was enthusiastic and having a blast.

I wondered why this was considered a problem. I asked how much folks would pay for this work, and found the problem. They were hobbled by a corporate requirement that they bill according to the charge rate schedule published for routine engineering work. As a result, they could have made more money staying in the office and designing a sewer pump.

The clients were receiving a valuable service that saved millions. The alternative was that a plant (and the attendant jobs in that plant) would shut down or drastically reduce production while conventional methods to resolve the issue were implemented.

Once we set up a new pricing mechanism, this group provided the most generous profit margin in the firm.

We put together a small marketing campaign to let other potential clients know of the this service. The brochure went under the glass top on the desk of many plant managers, who understood that they too could someday need this help, and would want the phone number right at hand.

Two years later, when another firm realized this market could be profitable, their VP of Marketing complained that their marketing efforts were agonizing because everyone though of our firm as the “Kleenex” for this problem. Imagine being branded as the sole source provider by a single mailing and word-of-mouth.

What can you see from your perspective that could improve your organization’s bottom line?