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DOI: 10.1177/097282010700400205
SBE (Pvt.) LtdThe Focused Selling Approach
In order to achieve better sales growth, Unilever Pakistan Limited (UPL) launched Project Ferrari in July 2002. The launch was the culmination of preparatory work done over a year and a half. Significant investments in terms of time, money and other resources were deployed to conduct an internal assessment of marketing and sales operations of UPL. An assessment of the concerns and issues of stakeholders in the external environment was also done. The external assessment focused on benchmarking UPL's sales and distribution practices and processes with leading multinational manufacturers and distributors in the country. In this regard, a number of UPL distributors were interviewed. The external environment assessment also involved a detailed census of UPL's point of purchase (POP) outlets. This effort, and the subsequent launch of Project Ferrari, was undertaken to achieve a double-digit average annual sales growth through a ‘focused selling’ approach. This approach entailed focusing UPL and distributor sales efforts on product category, as opposed to product assortment. In the two-year post-launch period, UPL faced stiff resistance from SBE (Pvt.) Limited. SBE was one of their major distributors for a part of Lahore. SBE's management believed that if significant revisions were not made in the project, it would have a negative impact on the viability of distributor operations.
Key Words: Internal assessment • stakeholders • product launch • focused selling approach • distributor operations
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