Sales Newsletter BU IS No. 2 | December 2018

 

Dear Colleagues,

After your positive feedback on the first issue of the BU IS Sales Newsletter, we are happy to give you some new reading material shortly before the holiday break. Our second issue of the newsletter is all about "tools". The Corporate Centers Marketing & Product Management and Sales & Project Management are working hard on tools and standards to support you in your daily work.

 
 

In the spirit of the words of the Greek philosopher Socrates "The beginning of wisdom is the definition of terms", from this newsletter on vocabulary in need of explanation will be marked with a "*". A definition can be found in the glossary at the end of the Sales Newsletter.

I hope that you will discover useful, interesting and entertaining information and wish you a relaxing holiday on behalf of the entire team of the two Corporate Centers.

Have a good New Year!

Silvio Konrad

 

First customer development discussions

 

TÜV NORD is breaking new ground in key account management. Within the framework of customer reassignment, all A-customers have been assigned customer-responsibles* in recent months. With the aim of further intensifying customer relations and jointly creating added value, customer-responsibles held initial discussions with selected customers in Germany to determine their needs.In an interview, Roger Verhoeven (from January 1, 2019 Cluster Manager West in the OBS PT) reports on development opportunities for customers BASF Coatings as well as Emschergenossenschaft / Lippeverband.

 
From left to right: Dr. Ingo Sander (Managing Director InfraChem), Christian Nowak (Head of Plant Safety), Roger Verhoeven (Regional Manager Dortmund and Hagen, from 01.01.2019 at OBS Prozesstechnologie Clustermanager West)
 

Interview with Mr. Verhoeven about the workshop Customer Responsibility*

"People who don't move won't move anything."

 

1. What did you learn from the workshop "Customer Responsibility"?

The clear assignment of A-customers to the corresponding OBS was a major challenge, which we were able to implement well with joint efforts. In the end, customer-responsibles were appointed for around 640 customers. We were sitting here together with the responsible OBS, Cluster and PC managers as well as other employees in order to put the assignment into practice. We received active support from the Corporate Center Sales & Project Management for the organisation of the workshops, the structured implementation and the post-processing. Together, we have thus succeeded in naming around 90 customer-responsibles and guaranteeing customer processing and further development for 2019. The workshop was absolutely necessary because it is crucial for success to do business with the right, i.e. profitable, A-customers and to stay in business. The result of the workshop forms the basis for customer development and retention by our customer-responsibless.

2. How did you proceed after the workshop?

After the workshop, we held separate meetings with the customer-responsibles to discuss the potential of the customers to expand their existing services. Of course, this is an ongoing process and is far from complete.

3. Which A-customers would you like to present?

We would like to cite the customers BASF Coatings and Emschergenossenschaft / Lippeverband as examples where we have offered our full range of services. This has been very well received by our customers. We are currently collecting information in order to include other TNG companies (e.g. DMT, TN Cert) in the contractual relationship. Here we are trying to further expand the cross-selling potential*. A regular exchange with the customer is also established (every 1 to 3 months). Here we seek contact, especially with technical management and purchasing, in order to always stay abreast of new developments and to bind the customer to us in the long term. Specifically, we are in the final stages of coordination with BASF Coatings on the draft contract. The customer Emschergenossenschaft / Lippeverand already has a current contract with us. The coordination of the existing offers is already in progress. We are looking forward to an order!

 

A-customer list

 

With around 640 entries, the A-customer list represents the most important customers in Germany. The overview shows TNS's eight top-selling customers from 2017 as well as their customer-responsibles.

 
 

The previously used key customer list will be replaced by the A-customer list in SharePoint as of January 2019. Here, the customer-responsibles have the appropriate authorization to maintain the list and track their activities. The first concrete results of customer processing will be presented to management at the end of the first quarter of 2019. A Sales Dashboard will be used for this purpose, which displays the most important key figures according to the respective OBS. Here the Corporate Center Sales & Project Management is relying on your cooperation. We are pleased about the active processing of the A-customer list. We will be able to give you a shoulder look at the new Sales Dashboard in the next Sales Newsletter.

 

Postal code key 2.0

 

No matter whether you are an employee in the switchboard, a technical assistant, or in another position with telephone contact. The postcode key 2.0 helps you in 5 steps to get to the right internal contact person and to place the customer inquiry correctly. As the first point of contact for identifying suitable contacts in Germany, you can choose between contact data for customer service, sales and management/representative.

As of January 1, 2019, the Corporate Center Sales & Project Management will provide the postcode key 2.0 for use in the BU IS DACH on SharePoint. A corresponding guide for handling customer calls is integrated in the Excel file or can be viewed in SharePoint under Guidelines (click here).

 
 

Tender Management*

 
 

 

The external service provider DTAD was commissioned in September 2018 as support for a successful tender search within BU IS. The search scope of the DTAD platform is one of the best on the market and covers all public tenders in the D-A-CH market as well as partly the EU market. Furthermore, we would like to emphasize the importance of the tender platforms of our customers as well as the international tender platforms. Mrs. Miriam Drabas (Key Account Manager) will be available to answer questions from tender coordinators* as DTAD's contact person. The OBS Renewables has already recorded its first successes. Here, an offer was submitted for an order also worth around 200,000 euros. We are pushing our luck and are looking forward to an order!

Essential functions of the tool: 

  • Tender coordinators have to create their own search profiles with their own keywords. Based on the OBS-specific search profiles, DTAD identifies corresponding tenders and displays them to the tender coordinator via the DTAD user interface.
  • The platform can be used as an acquisition tool: Observation of tenders for major construction projects/ projects from which, for example, the need for testing technical systems and equipment can be estimated.
  • The tool can be used for competition monitoring by searching for tender participations of competitors (market monitoring).
  • The awarding authorities that invite to tenders and award contracts can be analysed with regard to the awarding of contracts. It is interesting to analyse which awarding authority, in which region and to which bidders, awards a contract.

Measures:

  • All OBS appoint two tender coordinators
  • Tender coordinators are responsible for maintaining our customers' DTAD accesses & tendering platforms
  • Exchange of information with regard to cross-selling opportunities

You want to win tenders for your department and are interested in becoming a tender coordinator? Please contact us (Sales-TNS@tuev-nord.de)!

 

Glossar

 
 

 

Have you ever had the feeling that you could no longer follow a conversation well because of unknown technical terms? Unintelligible technical terms obstruct the flow of information and represent a hurdle in communication within the company and in contact with customers.

Terms that are taken for granted in a technical environment, for example, are not necessarily so in business management - and vice versa. With a common glossary we would like to contribute to a better understanding. This glossary is currently under construction and will be available to you starting in the new year.

In order to be able to represent as many terms as possible, we ask for your assistance. Please feel free to send us further suggestions from your day-to-day sales work, which we should include.

*Glossary - Terms used in this Newsletter*

(order after publication in the newsletter)

Customer-Responsible
The customer managers are assigned to central or decentral organizational units and may work across companies.

A customers
An A-customer is a high-revenue customer with whom TNS generates sales of >50k€ per annum and may have additional sales potential. A-customers are automatically referred to as key customers.

Customer responsibility
Customer responsibility means taking sole responsibility for customer-related incoming orders and defining and implementing measures aimed at establishing and expanding long-term customer relationships with the aim of generating and securing profit-oriented sales. This responsibility lies primarily with the customer-responsibles in the divisions or regions of TNS; exceptions are permitted. The allocation of customers is based on the criteria of the head office (if applicable, the head office of the subsidiary, see 5.2.1) and the existing competence to assume this responsibility.

Cross-selling (potential)
Cross-selling uses existing customer relationships to offer and sell additional services. The aim of cross-selling is to use a customer-specific sales strategy to place as many services as possible with the individual customer. Customers are often willing to take other services from a supplier they know, and at the same time acquiring new customers is also much more time-consuming for companies. Cross-selling implies that the sales people have well analysed and understood the customers' needs so that they can be served with appropriate services.

CRM
Customer Relationship Management, CRM for short, is a targeted process for building and maintaining customer relationships. The quality of the relationship between the company and potential, current and former buyers is crucial to the success of a company.

Tender Management
Tender Management is a strategic instrument that describes the process of searching, initial assessment, evaluation and internal forwarding of tenders. The goal is the generation of orders.

Tender Coordinator
A tender coordinator is an employee responsible for tender management.

 
 

Corporate Center
Sales & Projekt Management

Sales-TNS@tuev-nord.de