1. HydraHeat through its sales engineer Kurt Thaldorf could not define the relative powers of the decision makers at LUH. This is evident from the dairy notes made by Thaldorf. From the information provided, I could not see Thaldorf building relationship and creating a coalition with LUH’s decision makers.
2. HydraHeat did not foresee the customers’ expectations and some of the basic questions and could have prepared well.
a. For example, the first meeting on the 9th June was ended with handing over some technical brochures. in my opinion, there should have been a high-level delegation, including technical staff, to create first impression.
b. There should have been a product introduction to all the stake holders at LUH. This would have given an opportunity for LUH’s decision makers to get the first hand info about the product.
c. There was no material support to push Hydra heat’s market positioning vis-à-vis obsolescence.
d. There was no information about the client information of HydraHeat when requested by LUH. This gives me an impression that the sales engineer was not prepared enough professionally.
3. HydraHeat did not follow an aggressive marketing strategy by way of projecting the company’s market positioning well proactively. The sale was totally left to Mr. Thaldorf. Being a 1.6Million Euro sale, there could have been a close follow up from a level higher.

1. What is the cause of Black and Decker’s 9% VS Makita 50%
• B&Ds marketing strategy did not portray the high quality of tools as one of the main advertisement theme.
• B&D could not create a positive and favourable association with Professional and tradesmen segment as done by Makita.
• Professional membership distribution channel was fully utilised and dominated by Makita. 2. How is the buying behaviour of the