Ermittlung von Erfolgsfaktoren für einen nachhaltigen Vertrieb von Industriekesseln

This thesis investigates the success factors, which are responsible for successful, sustained sales of industrial boilers.
The industrial boiler marked is complex, fastidious and full of competitors with different sales and product strategies. The demands on the sales staff, organization and products are complex. Because of this and the reason that industrial boilers have been in operation for an average of 35 years, this research work looks at how industrial boilers can be sold to participate along the whole product lifecycle and the income that can be expected from the boiler sales and services, modernizations and spare parts.
With the mixed methods approach these key factors should be worked out. With a quantitative analysis of 166 realized contracts from 2015 till 2017 and a qualitative examination using 29 expert interviews with Experts from the industrial boiler industry, with more than five years experience.
Based on both studies, a uniform understanding of sustainable sales is to be compared with existing understandings from adjacent research areas and finally formulated. Based on the worked out understanding of the term, the work produces new insights into which requirements the organization and the product portfolio must meet in order to be able to participate successfully and sustainably in the industrial boiler market. Since sales functions as a direct interface to the customer, the present study also examines the decisive competencies of sales employees in order to successfully sell boilers. This work also provides insights into the amount of revenue that can be generated over the lifetime of a boiler. By combining the two areas of investigation, similarities are worked out in order to give more weight to the factors. With the results of the investigation, manufacturers of industrial boilers can sustainably align their sales strategy, optimize their product portfolio, hire sales staff accordingly, further train them and develop training programs.
This work provides fundamental insights into the sale of industrial boilers and produces new findings in a topic area that hast not yet been researched.