Case Study: Improving Sales Effectiveness and Customer Retention

Client: High-volume commercial waste collection operator

Despite its strong market position, the client faced an above-average customer churn rate, with limited transparency around the underlying causes of customer loss, presenting a significant opportunity for competitors to gain traction in the marketplace. The commercial model was heavily weighted toward new business acquisition:

• 4 salespeople targeted on new business growth each per year.
• An effective requirement to replace churn while delivering additional growth annually.
• Limited emphasis on customer retention, upselling, or account development
• Little visibility of churn drivers, customer risk indicators or renewal timing at depot level
• Depots lacked insight into customer value, growth potential and early warning signs.
• Growing tension between sales and operations, driven by misaligned objective and incomplete customer insight

The WasteVyne Solution

The WasteVyne restructured sales objectives to reflect the realities of a high market-share, competitive environment.

Key changes included:

• Introducing formal customer retention targets for sales staff.
• Removing any distinction between growth from new customers and existing customers.
• Encouraging sales teams to focus on:
  • Upselling and cross-selling additional services.
  • Identifying medium to long-term development opportunities within the existing customer base.
  • Providing mechanisms to discuss churn drivers.

The Impact

The revised strategy delivered measurable and strategic benefits:

• Reduced churn, stabilising revenue in a competitive market.
• Greater focus on account development, unlocking incremental growth from existing customers.
• Increased identification of upsell and cross-sell opportunities.
• Improved quality of customer insight shared between sales and depot operations.
• Stronger internal collaboration and reduced friction.
• Enhanced customer relationships and improved feedback.
• A clearer pipeline of medium and long-term growth opportunities, beyond short-term new business wins.

Result

The WasteVyne helped the client shift from a churn-replacement sales model to a sustainable growth strategy, maximising value from a strong existing market position while creating new revenue through customer development, service expansion and long-term planning. Salespeople were repositioned as account developers, not just new business hunters.