BASF IT Services, a BASF Group company, is among the leading IT service providers for the Process Industry.

Anderson Baillie’s initial engagement with BASF IT Services was to develop a new positioning stance for the IT provider across its pan European territories. With competition prevalent and a marketplace focused heavily on cost reduction, the new issue based proposition relied heavily on BASF IT Services ability to share world acclaimed process industry experience with fellow process manufacturers.

Preliminary marketing work undertaken by Anderson Baillie covered the three pre-requisites for best practice marketing. First, detailed analysis and segmentation of target markets, secondly, the development of a market focused proposition and thirdly the adoption of effective communications.

At an awareness level BASF IT Services target audience groups had been alerted to the company’s existence and its value proposition. At a market level, individual propositions were crafted for industry sub segments along with detailed propositions for each of the target audience groups.

From this foundation, BASF IT Services adopted a Key Account Planning (KAP) strategy from Anderson Baillie. The main objective of the KAP programme was to penetrate key accounts and to facilitate the sales team’s access to vital decision makers and influencers within.

This required further work in understanding the issues and key business drivers for each selected account and to consider a KAP framework to support a joint marketing and sales engagement programme.

To support the process, an analytical research programme was deployed to open up the target accounts. This required further account profiling activity to gain a deeper understanding of each of the target organisations within their respective market segments.

Primary research involved account-profiling telemarketing direct into the account, coupled with the interrogation of external sources of intelligence including web research.

The next level activity was to conduct a bespoke research study into each organisation, specifically aimed at the operational functions of the business.

From the intelligence gathered at the primary and secondary research stages, a Management Report was authored which referenced operational issues by business function, all set against an industry backdrop. In turn, the report referenced the BASF IT Services solution offer at an overview level.

Armed with this information an invitation process targeted the management and operational functions within the business. The purpose of the invitation process was to encourage the decision making team to commit time to a business briefing with BASF IT Services.

The strategy was successful in that a high percentage of the organisations targeted agreed to meet BASF IT Services on this basis.

The Management Report was used to stimulate interest initially and then latterly adopted as fulfilment. In each of the organisations where the KAP process gained entry into the accounts, BASF IT Services sales personnel were engaged in forward selling opportunities.

Anderson Baillie’s Key Account Planning process is a proven method of developing existing accounts or a means of opening up new accounts. Its strength is built on the close alignment of strategic sales and marketing processes working together with tightly defined propositions for each selected organisation.

“Anderson Baillie’s Key Account process compliments our own strategic selling approach. By connecting this process to other forms of generic communications we have been successful in gaining access into new business accounts a lot quicker than would normally be anticipated and more importantly on a basis where we can actively engage in the selling of offers directly.”

Ged Appleby, BASF IT Services, UK Sales Manager

“We wanted a process to accelerate sales pick up within target accounts. We also had to be sure that any process adopted formed part of our overall marketing effort. The KAP process whilst detailed, has become the necessary pre-requisite and companion to the strategic sales effort.”

Steve Wood, BASF IT Services, Marketing Manager