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Firmenich

A Global Challenge – A Totally Different Sector

We have included this short case study to give an example of a totally different industry and a different approach. Firmenich is an unusual company, privately owned by the family of the same name. It is based in Geneva and runs a global business of perfumery, flavours and chemicals. It is represented in every continent and its customers include names such as Coca Cola, Unilever, Procter & Gamble, Johnson & Johnson, along with all the major perfume Houses (l’Oreal, Dior, Channel etc etc). When we started to work with them, they were number 5 in the world. When we finished, they were number 1.

We were first involved by an American Associate of ours, Bob Parker, who effectively passed them to us. They knew that they had to change, that their position was slipping in an increasingly competitive global market. We were asked to help their Perfumery account managers grow the business. We launched a series of workshops around the world targeting their account management teams, some of which were geographically structured, some of which were large customer teams with a global responsibility. We also worked with their top team in perfumery and in chemicals to help them grasp the culture change that we were instigating.

Our process was, because it had to be, concentrated. Some of the global account teams would only meet once a year and we had to get them to fly into a central location just for our training and development. Every team had a set of different issues, so the account manager dealing with Central Europe had some difficulties with a culture in Bosnia that insisted on getting her drunk on Slivovich before they would sign a deal, the Americans could not understand that they were subordinate to Geneva, the Parisian perfumery team thought that business was only done over a very long lunch and that that was the sum total of relationships. None had the concept of Partnering, either with their clients or with their own internal suppliers.

Our workshops crashed them through the cultural barriers towards a Partnering concept, helped them develop their influencing and negotiation skills and started the process of a cultural change. In little over two years, the Perfumery division had moved to number one in the World.