FOUNDERS MESSAGE
ABOUT GOALS
Our clients have one single goal: to sell; and they hire us to achieve this goal. It doesn’t matter whether our client is a start-up that is under pressure from its investors or even a company that has been operating well for several decades and planning to enter a new industry, they are aware of their ultimate goal which is the same: business. What they don’t know is how to do business in industries like defence, aerospace, naval and space.
But we do, since this is our core competence: we bring in business for our clients and make them suppliers in these industries.
ABOUT EXPECTATIONS
The most often repeated questions from our clients are: what and whom to sell, what leads are generated, when RFQ activity starts, what the business case and the volume are. I am sure, all of them are familiar. Well, this is actually what business development about: identifying and generating leads, achieving RFQ activity, setting up a business case and providing the volume expected.
If it sounds so simple then why is it so hard to become a supplier – one may ask. Well, trust me, it isn’t so simple, at all, but it is possible with the support of DANS.
ABOUT SALES PEOPLE
During the process of becoming a supplier, one of the biggest challenges for our clients is that their salespeople are rarely prepared to conquer a new industry. Their experience and daily routine are primarily focused on handling incoming RFQs and giving offers. However, in these industries there is a very long way to get the first RFQs, and a classic sales team simply cannot complete this challenging journey alone.
In addition, we also help salespeople to become familiar with the specific pre-sales process of these sectors, to understand and learn their rules. The essence of our mentoring is that, as part of the service we provide to our clients, we actually introduce the designated personnel to the methodology of business development and lead generation. During the joint work with us, they master the basic techniques, acquire the knowledge and network capital based on they will be able to further manage this process independently after the termination of our cooperation.
We can call this process pre-sales activity, business development or lead generation, but classic salespeople do not actually have the sector-specific knowledge, global network and direct, personal contacts with OEMs that are essential for this activity. Anyway, why should they have? After all, this is exactly what DANS provides to its clients. We carry out the entire process until the RFQs are received, the only task for the sales team is to prepare the quotations.
ABOUT OUR CLIENTS
One of the secrets of becoming a supplier is that it is not enough to decide on it, you also have to be able to make a long journey to reach your goal, which is basically the responsibility of the owners and the management. Our clients often make the mistake of thinking that, after making a decision that requires a long consideration, they no longer have an active role in this process. Actually, this is not the case at all, as their personal participation is actually one of the basic conditions for becoming a supplier, which we constantly remind them of.
It is the personal responsibility of the management to manage any tensions arising from such contradictions and to permanently ensure all conditions for the realization of the designated strategic goals. It is our task to keep reminding them of these conditions.
The motivation of their personnel, especially engineers, buyers, and primarily salespeople, must be achieved and maintained in the long-term for a distant goal. The necessary human and material resources must be secured, which is investment in the future. In addition, the long-term aspects of becoming a supplier are often at odds with the company’s day-to-day tasks, which currently provide revenue.
With our continuous feedback on each lead, regular consultations, sharing of our best practices, suggestions and occasionally urging a management decision, we help our clients to ensure that their long-term strategic aspects are actually implemented during the day-to-day operations of their companies.
We help to create a balance between the challenges generated by the apparently distant supplier opportunities and the tasks that ensure daily revenue, in order to guarantee that the resources invested by our clients bring the expected results.