A proactive approach to economical improvement of well productivity was undertaken at the beginning of a development drilling program. This paper describes the comprehensive approach, laboratory tests, field implementation, and well-test verification of reduced skin damage. The approach was a combination of a minimally damaging KCl mud with limited leakoff, KCl in the cement and spacer, rapid drilling rates, and deep perforations. Field procedures were developed that ultimately led to openhole displacement of freshwater mud to KCl mud just above the pay; this reduced the incremental cost by a factor of 2. Use of the KCl mud helped improve well productivity by almost 60% over wells drilled with the freshwater mud commonly used in the region.