Chemicals

Due to the increasing tightness in chemical and polymer markets worldwide, the chemicals industry has started to show signs of recovery. Despite its stronger position today, the chemicals industry as a whole remains heavily exposed to economic cycles and the industry’s underperformance over the past several years can be mostly attributed to the global economic turmoil. Additionally, issues linked to the environment and geopolitical strife continue to create significant threats and opportunities. While these issues impact all facets of the business, the sales and marketing functions are particularly challenged by:

• Pricing pressure driven by both supply and demand issues
• Heightened global competition due to shale gas development
• Consolidation across the value chain
• Sales and marketing transformation linked to changes in buying processes

In such a complex and swiftly changing market, customer focus is more important than ever. We have tackled these challenges head-on with many leading chemical companies, helping them improve their sales and marketing effectiveness and productivity.

Our consulting engagements focus on creating a sustainable competitive advantage for our clients in a dynamic global marketplace and cover a broad spectrum of sales and marketing capabilities.

We work closely with our clients to:

• Create growth strategies based on fact-driven customer insights, competitive understanding and market opportunity assessment
• Develop go-to-market models built upon needs-based customer segmentation, customer-to-channel alignment and value proposition definition
• Design and optimize sales structures, including channel strategy, sales force sizing, deployment and streamlining of sales processes
• Build operational capabilities through effective expertise and tools that guide hiring, training and coaching practices; align and integrate performance management and compensation programs; and provide decision support grounded in rigorous sales and marketing analytics

If you would like to learn more about our experience with the chemical industry, we would be happy to discuss our insights regarding key challenges, critical success factors and proven approaches.