Progressive Distributor - Hands-on data

Hands-on data

Technology helps Minnesota Glove & Safety manage critical customer information but requires discipline and determination to use.

by Rich Vurva

For years, Bob Ludes wrestled with the same dilemma facing many distributors. Some salespeople track customers using contact management software such as ACT! or Goldmine, while pen and paper still suit other salespeople just fine. Either way, only the salespeople have access to the critical customer information. It’s a growing problem as companies strive to become more closely connected to customers to serve them more effectively.

“I had very limited visibility at any given time as to what individual salespeople were doing,” says Ludes, president of Minnesota Glove & Safety, a West St. Paul, Minn.-based full-line distributor of personal protective equipment.

While a stand-alone contact management program can be a handy way for salespeople to maintain information about their sales contacts and prospects, it typically isn’t integrated into the company’s software system. The result: important customer information is often unavailable to other employees who need access to the data.

If a salesperson is the only one in the company who knows a customer’s key decision-makers and their buying preferences, it also hurts the company’s ability to provide high-quality service across all departments. This limited visibility makes it more difficult to make informed decisions or to create targeted programs such as broadcast faxes and e-mails to support the company’s sales efforts. Even worse, the lack of centralized information can result in errors that cost the company money and may result in lost business.

“Our main goal was to do a better job of sharing information. It’s not unusual for someone to call in and say, ‘I want to buy that product that Mike let me sample.’ We can’t deal with it if we have no idea what sample he left,” Ludes says.

Last year, Minnesota Glove & Safety started using the Relationship Management (RM) software system that allows distributors to capture, organize and access business information company wide. Designed by Pivotal Systems, RM is integrated into Minnesota Glove & Safety’s existing distribution software system, FACTS from Aperum.

Because it’s integrated into FACTS, critical information is backed up every night. There’s less danger of losing a sale because someone misplaced an order form or forgot to forward a customer request.

Martin Rubin, president of Pivotal Systems, an authorized reseller of Aperum’s FACTS distribution software, says the RM system offers benefits that stand-alone contact management software can’t provide.

“We designed the program to provide the core functionality that most distributors need to manage contacts, coordinate communications, create to-do lists, notes and that sort of thing, and at the same time provide a very high level of integration with the application software,” he says.

In addition to enhancing the sales process, Rubin says RM is also a useful tool for managing prospect and vendor information, streamlining accounting functions such as credit/collections, plus handling numerous other business functions that require access to centralized information.

Prospecting tool
Minnesota Glove & Safety uses the software to prospect for new business by merging lists purchased from business information database sources and then filtering them by SIC code, job title and other relevant categories. When inside salespeople contact the prospects to gather additional information such as the types of products they buy and potential sale volume, they use RM to take notes and add or change contact information. The system captures all the information about the prospect in their profile, which can be accessed by others in the company for follow up.

During a sales call, if the prospect shows interest in a product or service, the rep can send additional information using the integrated e-mail function. After completing the call, the rep can enter appropriate notes, advance the contact to the next stage of the sales cycle if appropriate, then move to the next contact on the list.

“If the contact decides to purchase something, they’ll go in to the contact’s record and associate it either as an existing or a new customer, and then manage all of the open sales quotes directly from the same space,” says Rubin. “We’re trying to minimize the amount of movement the sales rep would have around the system.”

The system also provides greater visibility of vendor information. For example, when a vendor promises a product delivery date, purchasing manager Mona Thorp records it in the system and sets a reminder to check up on the order in a few days. Then, other people within the company can simply check the FACTS system to learn the status of orders rather than phone Thorp.

“Salespeople have access to notes I may have entered. If their customer is waiting on a back order, they can see the note I left. They can do that while they’re talking to their customer,” she says.

Getting sales buy-in
Sales manager Mike Leighton says the system offers benefits that off-the-shelf contact management software products can’t provide, but admits the company has been slow to reap the full rewards. The biggest stumbling block is convincing salespeople to use the RM system on a regular basis.

“We’re getting people to recognize the possibilities of using the system. We’re slowly but surely coming around,” Leighton says.

Some salespeople are reluctant to hand over contact information about customer relationships that took years to cultivate. Others are comfortable with their previous customer-management methods and are simply slow to change. Some are unsure of the technology.

“Our hope is to get to the point where salespeople consistently enter information into the system. We’re getting minimal information back right now. We have to make salespeople understand that we plan to use the information to their advantage. It’s a training issue,” says Leighton.

Despite some hesitancy from the sales team, Ludes is convinced that centralized information is the right move for the company. He believes that once salespeople understand how better information throughout the company improves customer service and reduces errors, they’ll come around.

“It’s giving us the opportunity to evaluate what customers are buying, which improves our direct marketing efforts. Even if a salesperson isn’t available to answer a customer’s question, we can look in the system to retrieve the needed information. That allows us to provide better customer service, which benefits everyone,” Ludes says.