Steinbeis Consulting Center Sales and Marketing Institute (VMI)

The Steinbeis Sales and Marketing Institute (VMI) offers implementation-centric support to entrepreneurs and companies, particularly in the SME sector, with a focus on sales and marketing. It offers this support through

• Management consulting
• Coaching for business leaders
• Market research (qualitative and quantitative)
• Workshops, seminars and training courses

Project methods are based on delivering measurable success:

• Experience from research and practice in a team
• Exclusive involvement of consultants with front-line experience in business
• Leadership at all levels of management
• Many years of expertise in a variety of industries
• An excellent network of contacts
• Experience in market leadership creates the next generation of market leaders

Business functions

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

Industry focus

• B2B such as capital goods and industrial services
• Consumer goods
• Construction and the real estate industry

• Strategic realignment and preparation for the handover of an owner-managed company to third-party management (medium-sized company in the food industry)
• Analysis, derivation of measures and implementation of a new pricing model for an international company in the plastics processing industry, including in-house tool development (as the only player in the market, successfully passing on price rises to customers during massive cost increases)
• Introduction of a secondary brand to serve entry-level price ranges and thus safeguard the main brand (EBIT growth of approx. 4 percentage points)
• Implementation of value-based price differentiation for spare parts (EBIT growth of approx. 2 percentage points)
• Development of a communication strategy for the implementation of social media and corporate social responsibility (8% increase in awareness)
• Introduction of customer value-based client management (reduction of sales costs by 7% - 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

Handout

• Knowledge Execution and Performance in Sales & Marketing (2017)