An American lubricant company that had struggled to penetrate the Mexican market had just launched a plan to hold large-scale events with mechanics. Like their competitors, they were attracting between 15 and 30 attendees per event.

We designed a new routine: event planning, invitations, execution, and follow-up. We identified the factors that reduced attendance and created strategies to maximize participation. These included determining who should extend the invitations, the ideal timing, an organizational guide, reminders and confirmations, and offering incentives to attend. The success of the events depended on the client’s commercial team and their distributors’ team working as one, and on each member performing their role exactly as planned. It was crucial to convince mechanics that no other brand valued and treated them as true business partners.

The goal was set at 100 to 150 attendees per event. Everyone was nervous—it seemed overly ambitious. However, the first event attracted nearly 500 attendees. Other regions followed, drawing over 400 mechanics each—not bad at all. Eventually, a new distributor who had been hesitant to leave his previous brand proposed what seemed like an impossible vision: doubling the attendance of previous events. He achieved a turnout of more than 800 mechanics. A year later, that distributor became the most important in the country, voluntarily abandoning the previous brand to fully commit to our client.

Hundreds of people contributed to this effort, helping our client quadruple their market share.

An American company dedicated to manufacturing parts for the automotive, medical equipment, and electronics industries had experienced exponential growth in its plant in Mexico, which had negatively impacted the performance of its Painting Department. Ralph, the General Manager, told us in frustration: “The department is a disaster. It´s full of lazy and careless people. The employee turnover rate is 400% annually, which affects both volume and quality. To make matters worse, the increase in demand has forced us to double the number of operators in the last two years.”

After observing the operation and conducting individual and group interviews with operators, supervisors, and managers, we identified three areas of opportunity: taking better care of department members, recommendations to optimize the production process, and control points to maximize approval by Quality Control.

Four months later, the department was impeccable, production and quality goals were being met, and employee turnover had dropped by 60%. As we walked down the hallway, some workers raised their hands to greet us, among them was María. I commented to Ralph: “All of them participated in our individual or group sessions and proposed improvements that were implemented. They appreciate having been heard.”

Along with the other product demonstrators, Karla was a young mother eager to take on the world. The twenty selected candidates were participating in the first training session for the new supermarket sales routine we developed in collaboration with our client. “Your persuasive skills are the key to getting our customers to switch from their current olive oil to the best in the category,” the CEO told them.

A week later, Karla was at her assigned store, wearing her uniform and pushing a cart filled with all the tasting materials. When she spotted her first customer, she identified her as part of the "Yupi" segment and naturally said the tasting script she had memorized. She offered the organic basil variety, knowing the customer would love it. “This is delicious! I’m going to use it tonight—we have guests over for dinner. I’m making pasta. What do you recommend?” the customer asked. “The basil one is perfect! You can drizzle a little over each plate once it’s served,” Karla confidently replied, repeating one of the recommendations from the training manual. Without asking the price, the customer picked up a bottle—all in just 55 seconds!.

By the end of the month, Karla excitedly shared her achievements along with her colleagues. The new team of product demonstrators accomplished extraordinary things, competing more with themselves than with each other—proud of their successes and their contribution to the success of their product and company.