Put true intelligence at the heart of your commercial decisions
We may be bucking the trend, but we firmly believe that many of the poor commercial decisions that are taken every day are due to 2 factors.
Firstly, an over-reliance on automation technology and AI to the detriment of collective judgement, and secondly, the prevailing obsession with averting failure rather than working towards success. We see this is every commercial domain that we focus on, with Contract Management Systems searching for precedents rather than common sense; CRM pipelines that give you a probable revenue that ignores whether you have actually done anything to improve your chances of success; and investment decisions made without serious consideration of the commercial development of their portfolio companies.
Collectively we call this a lack of Commercial Maturity. When commercial aware people do business, they look for ways to ensure success, rather than focus on protecting their interest, and investors actively help their portfolio companies succeed rather than wait until they show obvious signs of failure.
The good news is this is all achievable with the right support.
To underpin our approach we have developed the Mbrace series of simple tools that ask sensible commercial questions, and present the information not as pre-canned answers but as easy to interpret visualisations, designed to promote discussion. We all know that there is never a single supplier that is consistently best in every category, just as a single opportunity will never be clearly the best to pursue. Providing the context and training to help teams make these decisions, goes a long way towards Commercial maturity.
Underlying this is more than 30 years commercial experience, and when working collaboratively as TOG Conseil this experience broadens and grows further.
3 commercial domains
Although there is no limit to the ways of improving commercial maturity we have chosen to focus on domains that we have direct experience in.
1
Supplier selection
All too often, the criteria and business models on which key supply contracts are based ignore fundamental commercial reality, and are mis-aligned with business goals. This frequently leads to equally poorly aligned selection criteria.
We work with our customers to help achieve this alignment and build “commercial mature” contract relationships with their suppliers
2
Managing sales.
Delivering profitable sales is a broad remit. However there are key activities that will have significant impact, such as a realistic strategy, structured development of opportunities and growing existing contracts. These tasks are often the responsibility of Sales Managers, whom we help in this critical role; be it getting the best from their team, identifying and giving pertinent training, or providing individual coaching.
3
Developing commercial maturity
Many technology driven companies lack the commercial experience to be able to anticipate pitfalls as they grow. Similarly we see that many investment teams lack this experience and therefore cannot support portfolio companies directly. We interact with both teams, providing the knowledge to the investment teams to enable them to challenge their portfolio companies at board level, and helping the portfolio companies develop workable strategies and build the awareness of the commercial path they have embarked on.
"The combination of the teams and trainers experience together with relevant tools and methods for us to use. I enjoyed the workshop and role playing. ."
— Oil& Gas participant
FAQs
What sectors do your specialise in?
We are experienced above all in the Oil and gas sectors. That being said, the nature of the highly technological requirements means that many similarities exist with other sectors such as aeronautics.
You refer often to mature commercial relationships. What do you mean by this?
Any commercial transaction occurs as the result of someone needing something for which they are prepared to pay a price to someone who can satisfy that need. There is therefore a common need. For thirty years or so our society has become fixated with the headline price to the extent that often all other factors are ignored, even if both parties know that this will result in a poor outcome. A mature conversation should focus on what additional value a supplier can offer to not only meet the minimum requirements but to help the buyer be successful. This takes intelligence, competence and recognition of what is valuable.
Do you have your own proprietary tools for developing strategies?
We have developed commercial tools that we believe are missing today, however we have not tried to develop our own strategy tools, for the simple reason that there are so many excellent tools available from experts such as Vaughn Evans or Michael Porter. What we have done is to convert these into practical tools for everyday use.
For commercial tasks we continue to extend the Mbrace series of tools, designed to enable collaborative decisions.