A measured approach
25th April 2016 | Justin Cole
Two years ago Urgo Medical’s UK business embarked on a sales transformation. UK managing director Justin Cole maps out the journey.
Ours is a market in which suppliers cannot easily influence the total demand for the sector’s products: that’s a function of the clinical requirement for the treatment of wounds, and hence the need for dressings and compression stockings in the community at large. However, what we absolutely can do is ensure that, through our product excellence, customer service, marketing and – above all – sales skill, we become the supplier of choice and the long-term partner of as many clinical buyers as possible.
Our market position up to 2013 was already strong, but not as good here in the UK as in other countries. We were 7th in terms of market share for advanced wound care dressings and, although we were already the market leader in compression products, growth was steady but undramatic at a couple of per cent per year; meanwhile, the cost-saving and procurement landscape is getting tougher for suppliers to the NHS all the time.
We saw the need, and the opportunity, to change up a gear and put a strategy in place to do it. We realised that, like any other area of business improvement, we could provide the desire but someone else would be able to offer the expertise. After an extensive competitive tendering process, that someone else was Huthwaite International.
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