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With this background it would be easy to jump to the conclusion
that Elliotts are a conservative company, however its recent investment
in Sales Intelligence software from Vecta shows that appearances
can be deceptive and proves that even the age old good practice
of understanding what your customers need, can benefit from an injection
of modern technology.
Data Overload
Late in 2005, having increased its sales and marketing capacity, Elliotts
was seeking ways to maximise its sales. Most builders have accounts
with more than one merchant, so each time the sales team called or
made a visit they were competing against the builder’s ability to
buy elsewhere to suit their project schedule. Elliotts knew
that the most cost effective way to grow its share of the builder’s
project budget was to arrive at sales meetings armed with both the
right offers and a mix of products to suit the timing of the project.
Elliotts also wanted to convert unprofitable ‘cherry-picking’ customers,
who would perhaps only order low-margin ‘heavy-side’ materials,
by offering more value-add products with the order and thereby improving
the up-sell opportunities.
The sales team wanted the ability to instantly identify at what
stage of construction a build was, so that they could get in touch
with details & samples of the products that would be required
next. For example if a customer has bought bricks and blocks, they
are putting up a building, but if they have not yet ordered roof
trusses, the sales person needs to know and make a call about when
trusses will be required. Too early and it could be an annoyance,
too late and the sale may have been lost to another supplier.
In common with every other merchant, the principal problem facing
Elliotts was one of information; understanding purchasing patterns
could increase sales opportunities but the information available
via the ERP accounting system was completely unsuitable. Pages
of analysis and historical transactional data relating to invoicing
has its uses but what the sales team needs is for that mass of data
to be translated into actionable ‘nuggets’ of information, and this
needs to happen fast.
Sales intelligence
Elliotts sales and marketing director Paul Cleary turned to sales
intelligence specialists Vecta Software for a solution. Cleary
said, “When we looked at VECTA we had recently increased our sales
and marketing operation and, compared to the competition, it offered
us a more complete solution, making it very easy to uncover customer
drift or potential sales opportunities. Unlike the majority
of solutions out there, VECTA is far more geared to selling to a customer
base than a traditional CRM or contact management system. It
also addresses the specific needs and best practices of sales and
marketing teams in our industry, which generic Business Intelligence
tools do not.
VECTA Sales Intelligence provides sales staff and managers with
a comprehensive view of all customer and sales activities.
The software monitors and analyses customer buying patterns and
identifies missed sales opportunities. By highlighting such
trends and issues the software enables sales professionals to better
prepare for calls and switch from reactive or “milk round” sales
to intelligent proactive selling.
Cleary himself uses VECTA “…all the time.” extracting data for
reports and planning, he anticipates that eventually using the system
will eliminate the need to generate a weekly sales report.
He says that, “VECTA has given us more transparency. We can
drill down from turnover, all the way to type of sale, looking at
customers we are performing well and, perhaps more crucially, where
we are not performing well, all in a couple of clicks."
Clearly adds, “We can put this information into the hands of the
sales people, allowing them to be more informed and prepared before
every call which, in turn, means they maximise every selling opportunity”.
On Demand
Elliotts had originally planned to roll VECTA out to the sales team
in stages, initially to just four of its fifteen strong sales team.
However within weeks it was being used ad hoc by the majority of the
team to identify opportunities amongst their customers. VECTA
performs analysis of their sales and alerts them to sales opportunities
across linked products for example correlating paint and paint brush
sales or doors and door furniture purchases. This means the
sales team can pre-plan their customer calls. Sales managers
can also use these features to compare sales between sales people
or branches, allowing them to share best practices whilst uncovering
problems.
The Elliotts marketing team have also taken to using VECTA to refine
their planning for promotions and campaigns, using Sales Intelligence
information on opportunities to incentivise additional purchases
across ranges or even individual products.
Adding Realism
Bryan Eccles, Elliotts’ finance director is also a VECTA user, he
comments, “We bought VECTA as a sales effectiveness tool, but it is
also beneficial as a business intelligence tool. Branch managers
can analyse their customers in detail, even getting a quick update
on purchases as they see the customer on the way into the branch,
so that they can anticipate what they need."
He continues, “From a management perspective, VECTA alerts us when
a branch is not hitting its targets, we can see exactly which lines
are not selling and even understand which customers have stopped
buying their usual quantities. Recently we were working on budgets
and noted sales were up 50% on a product line in one branch.
While obviously we hoped this would continue, we used VECTA to look
at the sales patterns and it highlighted that this was due to purchases
of a specific product by one customer on a project nearing completion.
Without VECTA we would not have spotted that this was not a realistic
basis for budgeting for further growth. Using it for budgeting
allows us to be more realistic, giving us better buy-in from managers
and salespeople as they can see the logic behind the figures – both
the quality and speed of the analysis VECTA delivers gives us this
extra benefit."
The Future
Looking to the future, Eccles is optimistic, “We were going to wait
a while until everyone had access to VECTA, but since implementing
the solution we have seen an increase in revenue across key areas,
so we plan to roll it out across the whole sales team within the next
few months.” Elliotts will be equipping each sales person
with a ruggedised laptop, loaded with both VECTA and an order processing
system, that can be taken on site. “This system will enable
our sales people to proactively plan sales visits, quote and place
orders from the field for any of our 28,000 catalogue items, maximising
selling time and allowing us to better understand our customer’s business”.
"Since implementing the VECTA solution we have seen an increase
in revenue across key areas, so we plan to roll it out across the
whole sales team within the next few months.”
Bryan Eccles
Finance Director
Elliott Brothers Ltd
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