Steinbeis Consulting Center Sales and Marketing Institute (VMI)

The Steinbeis Consulting Center Sales and Marketing Institute (VMI) offers practical, results-oriented support to entrepreneurs and companies – particularly small and medium-sized businesses – in the areas of sales and marketing through

• management consulting,
• entrepreneurial coaching,
• market research (qualitative and quantitative),
• workshops, seminars, and training sessions.

The project approach is geared toward achieving measurable results:

• A team combining research and practical experience
• Exclusively consultants with hands-on operational experience
• Leadership at all management levels
• Many years of expertise across various industries
• Excellent network
• Experience as a market leader makes a market leader

Key Areas of Expertise:

• Marketing and sales consulting for small and medium-sized businesses, including CRM and pricing
• Digitalization in marketing and sales, including in-house tool development
• Sustainability in marketing and sales, including analysis and development of roadmaps

Industry Focus:

• B2B, including industrial goods and services
• Consumer goods
• Construction and real estate sector

• Strategic realignment and preparation for the transition of an owner-managed company to external management (a medium-sized company in the food industry)
• Analysis, development of measures, and implementation of a new pricing strategy at an international company in the plastics processing industry, including the development of proprietary tools (as the sole player in the market, successfully passed on price increases to customers despite massive cost increases)
• Introduction of a secondary brand to serve entry-level price segments and thereby protect the main brand (EBIT increase of approx. 4 percentage points)
• Implementation of value-based price differentiation for spare parts (EBIT increase of approx. 2 percentage points)
• Development of a communication strategy for the use of social media and corporate social responsibility (8% increase in brand awareness)
• Introduction of customer-value-based customer service (7% reduction in sales costs – without loss of profit)

Steinbeis Transfer Magazine

• Actively Managing Marketing and Sales Risk with the Steinbeis VMI SRAM Model (Transfer 2/2023)
  Steinbeis experts help SMEs shield themselves from market volatilities and inaccurate risk assessments
• Pricing Decisions in the Hive (Transfer 2/2022)
  Steinbeis experts develop pricing software for B2B sales
• “Selling no longer works these days without sustainability” (Transfer 2/2021)
  An interview with Professor Dr. Rainer Elste and Franz Speer of the Sales and Marketing Institute (VMI), a Steinbeis Consulting Center
• Still a Long Way to Go: Digital Transformation in Sales and Marketing (Transfer 1/2018)
  Steinbeis experts and the specialist magazine Acquisa unveil the 2017 Digital Transformation Index