Sales and Marketing

WACKER Products Post Strong Sales-Volume Gains

After 2009’s sharp decline, worldwide demand grew faster than expected in 2010. WACKER profited from this upturn in every division and across all sales regions. WACKER POLYSILICON, WACKER SILICONES and Siltronic reported the largest volume gains.

Customer Proximity Secures Success

One of WACKER’s key advantages is its extensive sales and distribution network. Generally, our divisions are responsible for their own global sales, and for providing customers with technical support. Across 30 countries, our divisions are supported by around 100 subsidiaries and sales offices, which are assigned to regional subsidiaries. Our regional subsidiaries consolidate sales activities in their territories. They conduct daily business, acquire new customers and build up our local-market presence. The overarching control of WACKER’s regional subsidiaries and of regional coordination lies with our Sales & Distribution department. Strategically and operationally, this department is responsible for integrating our German and international sales organizations into the Group. To this end, we use various instruments, such as key-account and distribution management, and an interdisciplinary “Sales Excellence” program.

Global Sales and Distribution Network

We greatly value direct and personal customer contact. It is vital for ensuring that our product and service portfolio is tailored to each customer and to region-specific conditions. Our technical competence centers play an important role here, offering customers the chance to familiarize themselves with our product lines, to discuss their specific requirements with experts, and to try out different approaches.

Distribution Management Is a Cornerstone for Selling Chemicals

Distribution management is a key strategic component at our three chemical divisions. Our use of distributors fulfills two key tasks:

• Opening up local markets where we do not yet have a presence or where our local sales organization offers only a limited service
• Optimally serving customers who order relatively low volumes

Through distributors, we save vital resource capacities and costs, and our sales teams can focus firmly on customer service. WACKER collaborates with some 259 distributors worldwide. Currently, they represent us in 87 countries. We conduct most of our distribution business through some 20 partner companies, who are often active on our behalf in several countries. Although our partner collaborations are always on a long-term basis, we subject our distribution network to a continual optimization and consolidation process.

Distribution Management

New Medium and Long-Term Contracts for WACKER POLYSILICON

Around 85 percent of chemical-division sales volumes (e.g. at WACKER SILICONES, WACKER POLYMERS and WACKER BIOSOLUTIONS) were handled by our own sales organizations in 2010, and 15 percent by distributors.

In 2010, WACKER POLYSILICON concluded additional medium to long-term contracts for large volumes of hyperpure polysilicon with solar-sector customers. This measure virtually ensures that our production capacities will be fully utilized until 2014.

Attendance at 75 Tradeshows Worldwide

WACKER attended 75 tradeshows around the globe in 2010 – simultaneously gaining new customer contacts and strengthening our existing customer base. We presented our varied product and service portfolio at a wide range of tradeshows, primarily in Europe (20), the USA (24) and in Asia (13). WACKER’s key tradeshow in 2010 was the “K,” the world’s largest plastics fair, held every three years in Düsseldorf, Germany. WACKER launched 12 new products at “K 2010.” We use a balanced scorecard (BSC) to measure the success of our tradeshow investment.

Tradeshows in 2010

WACKER spent €11.0 million on marketing-related communications in 2010, mainly for tradeshows, ads and product-related communications.

Strong Corporate Reputation

WACKER has a very good reputation among its diverse target groups. In a 2010 reputation-related analysis, we achieved the very high score of 88 (maximum: 100 points). On average, industrial companies and service providers attain a score of just 51. There were 203 individuals participating in the study, which corresponds to a response rate of 47.4 percent. Those surveyed included employees, customers, suppliers, analysts, administrative and civil service staff, as well as NGOs and politicians.