Situation
"We've been sales and rebate led for years."
Fertilizer producers moving into bio-stimulants, pipe makers moving into engineered systems, commodity chemical units becoming specialty businesses: the strategy changes faster than the commercial organization. Sales teams keep selling on volume and rebates, prices stay anchored to cost, and every customer is treated the same.
If two or more of these sound familiar, this page is for you.
Paraphrased and anonymized from recent conversations with marketing and commercial leaders.
“We've been a sales and rebate led organization for years. Now the strategy needs something different.”
“Our customer is the distributor, but the value is created on the farm. We need to sell through the chain.”
“We need value selling, but honestly the basics aren't in place yet.”
Most companies start by training the whole sales force in value selling. On its own, that rarely sticks: if segments, offers and prices haven’t changed, reps go back to selling volume within a quarter. It also means a mindset change, from treating the distributor as the customer to treating the whole value chain as partners. That’s why we usually start with a short consulting phase to agree the focus areas, then help the organization master that focus with training and coaching.
Find the customers who value what the specialty offer does, and focus on them.
Quantify value against the next-best alternative and set prices to capture it.
Build strategic relationships with the accounts that will pay for specialty performance.
Give the whole commercial team the same language, process and tools.
Typical phases. Every engagement is scoped with you, and many clients start with one phase.
| Phase | Typical timing | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| Assess | 4–6 weeks | Marketing and sales capability assessment, rebate and price leakage review, and interviews with leaders and customers. |
| Focus | 1–2 months | Needs-based segments, an offer for each segment (what's included and what's charged for) and a price position. |
| Build | By region or business unit | Value selling and key account management applied to live accounts, often as the first modules of your own academy. |
| Coach the transition | Ongoing | An outside coach for the leadership team: road map, timelines and execution help, so blind spots and biases get challenged early. |
20–30 minutes to talk through where you are in the transformation.
Start here →A baseline of marketing and sales capability across the organization.
Start here →Two days applying the KAM process to your own accounts.
Start here →Specialty Chemicals & Materials
[Result]
A specialty chemicals and materials leader changed its strategy from product and technology to markets and customers, which required new skills, processes and culture.
Read the case →Packaging · 6B USD, 30 countries
[Result]
A packaging leader with 6B USD sales and 23,000 employees moved from selling products to selling solutions, and needed to transform commercial capability worldwide.
Read the case →Academy program
Apply the KAM process to your own accounts with coaching from senior consultants, and leave with a forward road map for each target account.
$1,500 per person · Next: [Dates] Nov 2026
See dates →Usually not first. Training a large sales force before segments, offers and prices change rarely changes behavior. A short diagnostic tells you where to focus, and training then targets the people and accounts where value selling will pay back.
It looks at transaction data to see how much margin goes out through rebates, discounts and exceptions, and whether those payments buy the behavior you want. It often funds the rest of the transformation.
Segment customers by need, then define what each tier gets as standard and what is paid for. Reps also need help handling the objections that follow, which we build into the training.
It typically runs in phases over one to two years: a diagnostic and focus phase in the first quarter, then training and coaching rolled out by region or business unit.
"I've just taken over marketing, and we don't have standard tools."
A new marketing leader in a lean organization needs a team, a process and early results, fast.
How we help →"We're a new company with a parent company's marketing habits."
A new owner or independent company means new growth targets with marketing infrastructure that was left behind.
How we help →"We're about to launch, and the price is cost plus margin."
A new product worth tens of millions is about to be priced without a view of its value to customers.
How we help →Book a 20–30 minute sounding board conversation with a senior consultant who has sat in your seat. No cost, no commitment.