Helping a major player in the Australian construction landscape.
Our client’s construction reinforcing product has been used in most of the iconic structures in Australia including the Sydney Opera House, Melbourne’s Westgate bridge and freeway and Brisbane’s Gateway bridges. They are long established (100 years) and very well known.
The business has production mills in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane, and local production factories in outer-suburban and regional areas throughout the eastern states.
Initially Gibsons were engaged to implement changes to the sales process and pricing structure to optimise margins within Queensland operations to be followed by NSW and Victoria.
During the initial discovery process, it was found that most of the issues impacting sales were not so much immediately related to sales process and pricing, but deep within the ‘human landscape’, ultimately affecting sales performance.
At that point the sales process was characterised by dedicated individuals who took responsibility for meeting every customer requirement. While there is nothing wrong with these motivations, the effect was unclear accountabilities resulting in inefficiencies due to a lack of clarity and prioritisation of effort.
There was no “organisation” behind the effort.
Gibsons called on their deep experience and expertise in human resource management including sales management to develop a set of programs that addressed the culture and performance inequities. We were able to help the company better manage their sales teams by embedding processes and practices that would clarify accountabilities and lead to more effective management of performance.
The 6 improvement programs were implemented over a 6-month period in Queensland and are being progressively implemented across the rest of the business.
Since the changes were implemented revenue is exceeding targets, sales teams are more focused and accountabilities are understood and aligned across the entire sales process.
The company quickly saw marked improvement in their sales results.
The sales culture has shifted further towards an “Achievement Culture” the company was seeking. Pricing can now be reviewed with a foundation of strong sales performance that will truly maximise any further improvements made.
As is the case with many projects Gibsons work on, the reason we are called in is not always the cause of the challenges being faced. No matter how astute a management team is, there are always issues that, from the inside, are easy to miss or too “close” to effectively manage.
An experienced, senior business consultant who lives and breathes business improvement is accustomed to scanning operations from a more objective viewpoint with the benefit of deep experience gained from scores of business improvement projects. They can almost immediately spot problem areas that you may not be aware of.
This company was extraordinary in its willingness to embrace change so their acceptance and keenness to act on the counsel they were being offered reaped the highest level of benefit.
