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Manufacturing Information Technology systems
News Release from: Vecta Sales Solutions | Subject: Sales Intelligence software
Edited by the Manufacturingtalk Editorial
Team on 15 May 2006
Intelligence software improves welding
services
implementing a new customer benefit approach to internal and external sales teams have seen sales of targeted welding products grow by as much as 60% and customer satisfaction improve with it.
Leading supplier of welding and safety products, Weldspares OKI has joined the early adopters in the welding supplies industry by implementing a new customer benefit approach to it's internal and external sales teams, the results have seen sales of targeted product lines grow by as much as 60% and customer satisfaction improve with it Weldspares OKI is one of the UK's leading independent wholesale suppliers of welding, personal protective equipment (PPE) and related industrial products
This article was originally published on Manufacturingtalk on 1 Aug 2006 at 8.00am (UK)
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The company has one of the widest product ranges in the industry, with in excess of 13,000 stock lines, and sells to over 4,500 customers.
Keeping track of all these customers and making each sales transaction personal with specific information is what the company wanted to do, but had previously seemed an impossible task.
"A lot of our business comes from a small number of customers and, as in most companies there has been a tendency to overlook customers with a lower spend," said Alan Underwood, IT and marketing director at Weldspares.
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What we needed was to turn this situation on its head and for our sales executives to actually have a genuine reason for every call.
Essentially the implementation of Sales Intelligence (SI) software has allowed us to do this, instead of being simply reactive, our sales staff are now able to call and say 'I want to talk about one particular product group and how we can save you some money'.
The customer tends to feel appreciated and we make sure we are maximizing on our sales opportunities." Weldspares managing director, Mark Underwood commented, "We operate in an exceptionally competitive environment where prices are continually declining, we have no choice but to import from low cost manufacturing countries and there has been a significant price deflation on industrial consumables generally.
In order to counter this trend and to offset the consolidation that is happening within both the industry and the customer base, we realised we had to become more proactive." Underwood continued: "The Vecta SI software has allowed us to do this by identifying customers that could benefit from other items in the range that they are not already buying, effectively a 'cross-sell' opportunity, and alerting us to any customer that stops buying from us.
We can then give them a call, find out what's wrong, hopefully address any issues and keep them on-board.
Essentially customers like a supplier that is easy to work with and we intend to take that as far as we can." There are five people working in telesales at Weldspares and three sales representatives out on the road using VECTAPocket.
"They have reacted very well to the software," said Alan Underwood.
"The system has allowed everyone in the sales team to be more effective by providing for our customer's needs more intuitively.
When we have chosen particular product lines to focus on we have seen as much as a 50 to 60% increase in sales of every product we targeted.
The software has really helped to streamline our business and I am sure will play a vital role in the success and profitability of the business in the future." In contrast to traditional CRM systems, VECTA draws on data existing within the accounting or ERP applications to quickly analyse and summarise customers' buying patterns and behaviour.
In addition, it does not require the level of investment, both in terms of time and money, as that of traditional 'Business Intelligence' (BI) solutions as VECTA delivers actionable sales intelligence, out-of-the-box.
There is no need to build the data warehouses and dashboards using toolkits that BI solutions provide, and unlike CRM, salespeople don't have to laboriously enter data before they get useful information back, so end user adoption is guaranteed.
* Added value - another business benefit that Weldspares has identified since deploying VECTA is improved communications with its customers: "Using VECTA we can actually let customers know when they have lost business themselves," said Alan Underwood.
"Quite often they do not know that their customers have stopped buying something because many of them aren't as computerised as we are, so for us to be able to improve their sales effectiveness by telling them that they have lost business is a useful tool.
They can go away and investigate why they've lost it and if they get it back we usually get it back too." Operating from its headquarters in Oxford, UK and established in 1996, Vecta Software Corporation provides sales intelligence solutions to hundreds of companies, where thousands of salespeople use VECTA sales intelligence solutions on a daily basis to dramatically improve their sales performance.
VECTA claims to be able to boost sales performance in any business that has a quota-bearing sales force that is selling to an account base.
The software enables manufacturing, distribution and wholesale companies to significantly improve sales effectiveness and performance.
Companies that have already benefited from implementing VECTA include suppliers of office products, IT and technology, automotive aftermarket, building products, food and drink, medical supplies, industrial supplies, electrical products, paper and packaging.
VECTA makes salespeople more successful by giving them easy access to vital information about customer buying patterns and account status.
The software analyses historical buying patterns to identify issues and opportunities for future sales.
Using VECTA salespeople can eliminate wasted effort and focus on the opportunities that benefit their company most.
VECTA can be adapted to existing sales models and can therefore have an immediate impact on sales.
Equipped with VECTA Sales Intelligence software, companies gain an insight into their customers' buying patterns and can define effective sales strategies.
This valuable information helps them to sell more intelligently, improving revenue and margin through increased average order size and increased order volume.
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