Today we will give you our vision on how to guide the active and potential customer in an Industrial SME. We are talking about Customer-Centric Industrial Strategy or B2B.
At BtrueB we are specialized in Customer-Centric strategy for Industrial and B2B environments thanks to having been able to help many Industrial SMEs (and non-SMEs) to be profitable by malta phone number resource transforming their way of relating to the customer; aligning Marketing, Sales Digitalization and B2B Customer Experience.
In the midst of the deglobalization process that we are experiencing and the increasingly unpredictable changes in the end consumer, large companies have realized that having a great price or great quality is no longer the only synonym for profitability in a market. The form of relationship is beginning to be seen in terms of profitability as well.
The capacity for dialogue, productive flexibility and, above all, the internal agility of an Industrial SME, both in terms of components and final product, are what ultimately offer the best guarantees of future profitability for many large corporations.
Investing in a continuous relationship with the most reliable industrial SMEs will mean reducing start-up costs and increasing the level of trust and agility for a large company that wants to remain in a global market. Investing in Asian suppliers, for example, which are much cheaper, is no longer the only solution to compete.
In other words, the way of relating is at the same level as price and quality when selecting industrial suppliers for companies and brands seeking a long-term presence in a market through constant adaptation to change.
But, for this "match" to materialize, the Industrial SME will have had to previously carry out a process of transformation and orientation towards the client and the market. Both to be located, with its value well understood by a potential client, and to be internally efficient by assuming a more intensive and reliable but also more demanding form of relationship.
Contents hide
1. The ability to relate to Complexity as a differential element
2. Understand Your Value: The Industrial Value Proposition
3. Orient yourself well
4. Re-learning to Listen
5. The Digital Blind Spot
6. The Industrial Customer Process. How to Bring It to Experience Before, During and After the First Order
7. Client no: people with people
The ability to relate to Complexity as a differential element
Before beginning to detail which aspects, in our opinion, should be worked on to guide the client of an Industrial SME, we must highlight a competitive factor that in our opinion is not usually well interpreted: The relationship with the increasing complexity that a client of an Industrial SME often needs to adapt to changes and compete.
A first notable aspect, with globalization, is the fact that Industrial SMEs have had to accept that they cannot be or fight to be the cheapest price even in their geographical area and this has forced them to choose their battlefields much better, that is, their clients and their differential value.
Industrial SMEs, despite being quite pigeonholed in an industrial process or product, have been in a market for several years, which has generated credibility and often a fairly stable financial situation, which allows them to have a certain flexibility when it comes to dealing with their costs as well as with the client and the complexity derived from their orders.
Something that large industrial companies, trapped by price as the only competitive factor, leonine economies of scale, short-term profitability demanded by funds and the defence of market share, cannot afford.
But what really makes it easier for an industrial SME to take on customer complexity is the experience and commitment of a culture that reduces staff turnover and is used to interacting with each other in different situations and not always in the same one.
The connection between engineering, production, sales and quality is almost daily in an industrial SME. This generates friction but also the fact of knowing each other well, sharing experience, knowing how to work together and often the ease of seeing each other day after day in a workshop without having to take a plane, learn another language or send an invitation via Microsoft Teams.
Although the client would need to be introduced into this equation to understand that the right circumstances exist to direct the client to this Industrial SME, here is the great strategic difference of the Industrial SME: I want to and know how to relate.
