The organisation

Essentia Protein Solutions the global leader in the supply of high quality functional meat proteins, serving the world’s major manufacturers of processed food products. Headquartered in Denmark, the UK division manufactures and distributes a substantial quantity of ingredients to UK producers, from its UK manufacturing operation based in the West Midlands. With a dedicated sales team in the UK, the organisation must manage complex product trials with demanding approvals procedures.

The challenge

Trials of food ingredients can be quite complicated, involving many stakeholders and stage gates. Managing multiple trials at multiple accounts distributed across the UK demands good project and process management, and work can be wasted if attention is not paid to involving the right people at the right time. Furthermore, Essentia (UK) has many potential market segments it could approach, and a key challenge was to decide where best to invest the sales team’s activities.

The solution

Working with a group of senior sales professionals, and a project lead with the sales team, Selling Interactions helped Essentia develop their own sales best practices, including:

1. A segmentation and targeting model for protein additives.
2. A highly customised sales process.
3. Competency profiles for account managers.
4. A sales meeting format.
5. An opportunity management reporting.

This methodology not only enabled key knowledge of customer buying processes to be harvested, but also resulted in more ownership in applying the sales process. Furthermore, the sales team used the various stages of the sales process they created to design the monthly opportunity management meeting, fully aligning process and reporting, effectively embedding the marketing and sales strategy.

The Results

Essentia is now better able to lead client conversations and the sales engagement process so they increase their win rate. Segmentation has allowed them to make clear strategic choices about where to play and where not to play. And the monthly report meetings enable management to prioritise support for important opportunities, as well as have better visibility of the sales pipeline.