OfficeXpress is one of Europe's leading specialist distributors of electronic office supplies offering a full range of related stationery consumables and peripherals for all environments from the largest data centre to the smallest office. Despite tough market conditions the company has aggressive plans for growth and has identified that improving telesales performance is the key to achieving full potential.

The sales team at OfficeXpress face a number of challenges including difficulties in identifying drifting customers and add-on sales opportunities. In order to address these problems OfficeXpress has now invested in a company wide roll-out of VECTA Sales Intelligence software after the first phase of the project demonstrated an impressive return on investment (ROI).

VECTA Sales Intelligence provides sales staff and managers with a comprehensive view of all customer and sales activities. The software monitors, analyses and measures customer buying patterns and missed sales opportunities. By highlighting such issues VECTA enables sales professionals to better prepare for calls and turn reactive selling into proactive calls. Ultimately companies that deploy Sales Intelligence enjoy improved gross margins, increased sales and higher levels of customer retention.

"The decision to roll-out VECTA was driven by a desire to stimulate sales growth through the OfficeXpress direct telesales team and help the management to direct sales strategy in line with company profit objectives," explains OfficeXpress sales director, Stephen O'Brien. "Our existing systems made it difficult to spot missed sales opportunities. We started using VECTA in one section of our telesales operation and saw a significant improvement in the performance of the VECTA users compared to those who were not using the VECTA solution. We measured the increase in sales to prove the business benefits that VECTA provided and were delighted with the results."

Before VECTA, the members of sales force selected for the first Phase of the VECTA roll-out had experienced a decline in profit contribution during July-August of 9.51%. This compared to an increased profit during the same period of 6.54% by the remainder of the sales team. Following implementation, the situation was reversed. "The contribution made by sales staff using VECTA increased by 6.51%," explains O'Brien. "The non-VECTA users' contribution declined by 7.79% over that same period. The VECTA users clearly outperformed the non-VECTA users, and I have no doubt that this was down to the increase in proactive selling made possible by VECTA."

OfficeXpress was also able to quantify the reduction of drifting accounts. The company identified 460 customers that had reduced spending in the July-August period when compared to the May-June period. During the September-October period, £21,755 of additional profit was regained from these accounts using VECTA Sales Intelligence.

Daniel Preston was one of the OfficeXpress sales team chosen as part of the first phase of the VECTA project. "Daniel is considered to be one of the best VECTA users and has achieved significant results," says O'Brien. "Since adopting VECTA Daniel has increased his number of monthly orders from 68 to 107 resulting in a £4,882 swing in profit performance in the September-October period."

Preston attributes this uplift to the Sales Intelligence gleaned from using VECTA: "VECTA shows me exactly what I should be talking to my customers about. This has helped me achieve additional sales into many of my accounts."

Thanks to VECTA the management team at OfficeXpress now has total visibility over sales performance and opportunity. "Lost customers have been identified and targeted and are now beginning to return," says O'Brien. "The average monthly uplift in sales per VECTA user is close to £1,000. This far outweighs the average monthly cost per VECTA seat. We've seen net monthly gains of more than £17,000."

The first phase of the project was an overwhelming success and as a result OfficeXpress has rolled out VECTA Sales Intelligence across the business. "VECTA has had a very positive impact on the profit performance of our sales team," says O'Brien. "This is largely due to existing customers spending more as a direct result of the more proactive and focussed sales approach that is achieved with VECTA. The decision to deploy VECTA across the entire sales team was an obvious one. The improved sales performance has more than recovered the initial investment."

"The decision to deploy VECTA across the entire sales team was an obvious one. The improved sales performance has more than recovered the initial investment."

Stephen O'Brien
Sales Director
OfficeXpress