Automotive marketing & sales

The automotive industry is under unprecedented pressure to increase customer satisfaction and make sales and service structures and processes more efficient. In light of a stagnating market and increasing competition, incentive spending has risen substantially, thus massively eroding profits. Top management decisions are clouded by a multitude of conflicting interests such as volume targets, market share objectives and production requests. We support clients in facing these challenges by developing the relevant actions to increase efficiency in marketing & sales and after-sales. Together, we can achieve real sales and service excellence.

While efficiency potential is tapped systematically in engineering, production and purchasing, there is still significant room for improvement in the area of sales and after-sales.

On average, today´s market players consider their own sales and after-sales performance to be satisfactory, but not good. Emerging brands in particular see significant opportunities to improve their own sales and after-sales operations.

Our goal: Support our clients in improving efficiency to achieve real sales and service excellence

In close cooperation with our clients, we work on a wide range of strategic issues, develop concepts and help to solve operational problems. With our 300 experienced automotive experts located in 43 offices worldwide, our team's industry and consulting experience guarantees that we can generate tangible value for our clients. By working on a variety of projects with OEMs and dealers, we have acquired broad and in-depth experience in automobile marketing, sales and after-sales.

We have also gained special expertise in the area of retail performance improvement through numerous projects for major clients. In the case of a major European OEM, we were able to realize significant sales (+28%) and profitability (+150%) improvements within a two-year period. We achieved this by thoroughly assessing dealer performance and benchmarking it against best practices, defining the necessary targets and measuring results.

Over the past few years, the expertise Roland Berger has developed in the area of brand strategy and brand image development has substantiated our ability to deal with the increasing challenges of successfully managing brands in a highly competitive market environment. We helped a leading European car manufacturer align its branding strategy with future growth targets by evaluating its product name strategy and comparing it with those of competitors. As a result, a consistent strategy has been developed that will help our client adjust its product portfolio in the medium- to long-term. In the future, it will also help develop an even stronger brand in the market for passenger vehicles.

An increasing number of dealer network restructuring and wholesale alignment projects has helped build the reputation of Roland Berger's Automotive Competence Center. This Competence Center is considered a reliable and efficient partner in mastering the future challenges of wholesale and dealer network organizations. By analyzing the current market structure and defining what the future network should look like, investors were identified to cover gaps. At the same time the fitness of the wholesale organization is a key element to support the retail strategy. What's more, it was possible to develop a consolidated business plan to significantly improve future overall performance.

Together with our clients, we strive to improve efficiency and support them in achieving outstanding results. This means streamlining operations, exceeding customer and dealer expectations and turning sales and service excellence into market share gains.