Who would have thought that, page-17

Hi all

A bomb beneath the sales team is a tad drastic imo.

It may also not produce the desired result.

What about a big string of fire crackers under the sales strategy that drives the sales team?

Becoming breakthrough player in the specialty concrete game surely requires a multi faceted business development strategy ... targeting applications, asset owners, regulatory authorities, designers, concrete producers, contractors, materials specialists and so on?

Some of the above requires professional to professional interaction and some can be handled by well supported trained technical sales staff. Early interest and growing acceptance is more likely to stem from cracker presentations at industry conferences on the back of a series of technical papers published in respected industry journals. A good sign would engaged questioning from audiences after the presentations.

To be able to write and present targeted technical papers requires a professional skills set and the subject matter has to be somewhat ground breaking. This whole process takes time and focus but if the product is good and the technical presentations are effective it is smart playing for the long game and carries a whole different level of meaningful cred than can be expected from sales reps working with product data sheets and some earlier adopter project case studies.

It can be done on a budget directed by one in-house technical professional preferably with industry and academic experience and funding 2-3 PhD students covering different aspects of nano/pozzolan interaction, longitudinal studies covering the early years of early adopter projects etc with different institutions. This process also creates potential long term helpful relationships with university engineering schools.

Started 3 years ago, this program could well be producing technical papers of interest now. This is the long game but the strong game when the goal is commercialising ground breaking concrete technology. This program can parallel early efforts for the low hanging fruit driven by a sales staff. For the long game, technical papers and conference and industry presentations have to kick in to give sales staff credible marketing collateral and an evolving story.

Dex