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NARRATIVE & MESSAGING
MRO Inventory Management Story
Grainger sales efforts focused on becoming the preferred supplier for “unplanned purchases”; i.e., MRO material needs that are infrequent and non-repetitive. However competitive pressures shifted attention to acquiring customers’ inventory related purchases—”planned” items purchased frequently and usually kept in stock.
An inventory replenishment solution was launched and incrementally developed over a few years before being wholly rebranded as KeepStock. Shortly thereafter it was determined most sellers were not comfortable talking to customers about inventory as a topic or issue and often resorted to simple feature dumping.
Leadership requested new messaging integrated with sales enablement tools and training.
Working as part of a cross-functional project team I utilized insights and conceptual models previously derived from my customer research to conceive a “MRO inventory story”. Designed to be utilized by Grainger sellers during impromptu customer conversations, the story was visually facilitated by drawing a process diagram with icons, labels and insight references.
I collaborated with Grainger’s Learning, Training and Organizational Development team to create sales enablement materials and then facilitated a nationwide sales training effort. Thereafter sellers executed customer conversations whenever presented with an opportunity.
The entire project—from kickoff to final training of sales teams—was completed in less than six months.
Deployment was completed via cascading train-the-trainer approach. Subsequent variations of the story were rolled out to SMB and National Accounts sales teams the following year. A revised version of the story was deployed to Sales teams three years later.
More than 3,500 Grainger sellers utilized the MRO inventory story as the basis of customer conversations over a four year period. During that time KeepStock experienced 152%+ channel revenue growth; a 26% CAGR.
A third iteration of the inventory story, retitled as MRO Material Flow, was utilized for the launch of KS Managed to convey the scope of management tasks covered by the solution.
