The Path to Customer-Centricity: A Manufacturing Company’s Transformation

Last year, I sat down for a coffee with the newly appointed CEO of a well-established manufacturing company in Riyadh. Having previously known him from his previous role at another organization, it was clear from the outset that he was someone who truly understood the pulse of the market. His insightful words stuck with me: “We’ve been doing well with our territory-based approach, but the world has changed. We need to rethink how we engage with our customers.”

This company had been experiencing stagnating growth despite a strong history in the market. The CEO was quick to identify that, while their approach had served them well in the past, customer expectations and buying behaviors were evolving—especially as customers became more informed, digital-first, and solutions-driven.

The Core Challenge: Navigating a Moving Target

In today’s rapidly evolving business landscape, companies face an ever-changing environment. The rise of new technologies, the shift to digital platforms, and the need for faster responses to customer demands have left many traditional sales structures struggling to keep up. The challenges were clear:

• The company’s territory-based structure no longer aligned with how customers engaged.
• The sales team had not yet transitioned to a customer-centric approach, focusing more on regions rather than understanding individual customer needs.
• A lack of cross-functional collaboration meant customer service, sales, and engineering teams were not working seamlessly together to offer holistic solutions.

The CEO realized that:  This approach, though once effective, was no longer sufficient to drive growth or meet the evolving needs of our customers. We need a new way to engage with our audience, one that would focus on customer outcomes and collaboration across functions.

A Customer-Centric Blueprint for Transformation

To tackle these challenges, we worked with the commercial team to develop a comprehensive customer-centric transformation strategy. The goal was to move away from traditional sales territories and create a more dynamic and integrated approach.

1. Redefining Organization Design: Moving to a POD Structure

Instead of organizing sales teams by territory, we helped the company adopt a POD design structure. This meant creating cross-functional teams (or “pods”) dedicated to serving specific customer segments. These pods included members from sales, engineering, customer service, and product management, all working collaboratively to meet the unique needs of each customer.

The POD structure allowed salespeople to become true industry experts, speaking the customer’s language, understanding key industry trends, and offering tailored solutions. This shift not only aligned teams with customer needs but also facilitated greater collaboration across functions, ensuring every customer touchpoint was consistent and impactful.

2. Proactively Understanding Customer Buying Journeys

Next, we focused on mapping out the customer buying journey. We identified key touchpoints where customers were most engaged and sought to remove friction in the process. This required understanding the customer’s pain points, needs, and motivations at each stage of their journey.

To facilitate this, we empowered the sales teams with the tools and knowledge they needed to speak the customer’s language. By truly understanding the buying process, the company could better position itself as a trusted advisor, not just a supplier.

3. Streamlining Internal Processes for Agility

We also addressed the company’s internal processes. Streamlining these processes helped reduce bottlenecks and fostered more agile decision-making. We introduced new technologies and tools to provide real-time insights into customer interactions, which helped the company stay ahead of market trends and make informed decisions faster.

This resulted in quicker responses to customer needs and a more efficient sales process, allowing the company to maintain a competitive edge in a fast-moving market.

Key Achievements: Accelerating Growth and Building Loyalty

The transformation led to several significant achievements, resulting in impressive revenue growth and enhanced customer satisfaction:

• 18% increase in revenues: The customer-centric approach led to the creation of more opportunities per customer in the first six months. This was driven by the ability to better understand customer needs and offer tailored solutions.
• Sales Velocity increased 20%: With a more proactive approach and better alignment across functions, the company was able to reduce sales cycle durations, resulting in faster conversions and improved cash flow.
• 10pts increase in the company NPS: This improvement in customer satisfaction led to an enhanced brand perception, positioning the company as a trusted solution provider rather than just a product supplier.
• Improved Closing Rates by 3%pt: The new POD structure increased team productivity, sales teams became more engaged and motivated.

The Takeaways: Shaping the Future of Customer-Centric Organizations

This transformation wasn’t just about a shift in organizational design or adopting new technologies—it was about creating a mindset shift that would allow the company to thrive in today’s fast-paced, customer-driven market.

For other companies not necessarily only in manufacturing seeking similar growth, here are some actionable steps to consider:

• Adopt a customer-centric sales approach: Move away from traditional sales territories and focus on understanding your customers’ specific needs.
• Invest in cross-functional collaboration: Align your teams around the customer journey to deliver more personalized, value-driven solutions.
• Implement agile processes: Streamline internal processes to facilitate quicker decision-making and reduce friction in customer interactions.
• Measure sales velocity: Focus on improving the time it takes to close deals, as this can have a major impact on growth and cashflow.

As this transformation illustrates, the future of manufacturing sales lies in being customer-centric, agile, and collaborative. Companies that can embrace these principles will not only improve their sales processes but also strengthen customer loyalty and position themselves for long-term success.