CHALLENGE:

The client’s product offering had grown unwieldy, and several product lines were losing money. Some of the R&D staff had become attached to “pet” projects even though customers were no longer buying in to their programs. “With a drop in sales, we needed to trim the company’s overall product offering and definitely stop work on projects that had become marginal,” said Mark Gabriel, former VP of Marketing and Sales for EPRI. “Our goal that first year was to cut 20% of the company offering. To do this, we needed a formalized process for evaluating all products and product lines that was also customer-driven,” added Gabriel.

SOLUTION:

Gabriel asked Celia Lawren, who was managing the launch of the company’s offering, to also develop a market assessment process for product line marketing managers to evaluate their existing portfolios. Projects had to meet certain criteria before being included in that year’s offering. Each technical vice president submitted their candidate offering to a program review before the CEO and Gabriel. “Having a standard ranking system reduced many of the turf wars that had ensued in prior years,” said Gabriel.

At the same time, Lawren also devised a new way of presenting the offering to customers that allowed them to sort through projects and products online based on their company’s business drivers and hot buttons. The offering could then be tailored to individual company or buyer needs, making it easier for customers to find solutions to their particular issues. “We succeeded in paring down the offering, but since we released it only once a year, it was still a sizable portfolio for customers to deal with. Lawren’s web-based approach let customers slice and dice the portfolio, which simplified the buying experience for them. Because the offering was basically paperless, we also saved thousands of dollars on print and mail.”

“Marketing is part vision, part logic, and part creative. Celia Lawren is a marketing communications expert who excels at thinking both creatively and logically to come up with great solutions. She executes well to vision and knows how to negotiate the sticky issues,” summed up Gabriel, who now is Executive Consultant and Principal at R.W. Beck, Inc.