on with the company’s 14 mobile, outside sales reps.
| At a Glance: Arbill Glove and Safety Products |
| The company: Philadelphia-based Arbill Glove and Safety Products is a distributor of over 4,000 glove and safety products. Staff includes 100 inside sales reps and customer service personnel and 14 mobile, outside sales reps. The problem: The solution: The technology: |
This is a big relief
for mobile employees, who are plagued by lost meeting opportunities while
on the road. Often, meetings with clients are cancelled for illness, unforeseen
problems, or simple forgetfulness. Prior to implementing the SalesLogix
software, when meetings would fall through, sales reps would attempt to
contact other clients in the area by consulting paper records. (Remember
the shoebox?) Now they can plug in the zip code of a client’s location on
Internet-capable cellular telephones and are instantly provided with information
on other customers in the same area. Pulling up the contact information
presented on their cellular telephone display, they can then quickly place
a call by selecting the dial feature from a menu.
“Because all the information
I need is stored in the SalesLogix database and I can access it with my
phone, my customer details are available when and where I need them most–in
the car, at customer offices or lobbies, and when traveling,” says Herb
Schell, a safety specialist (or outside sales rep) at Arbill.
Simply using the zip-code
lookup tool has led to an increase in sales visits from four to five per
day to six to eight visits per sales rep per day, according to Julie Copeland.
“These are solid visits,” she says, since customers are contacted by telephone
and have made themselves available for the sales rep during the conversation.
“In the past they would drop off only a catalog, sometimes,” and have no
face-to-face contact.
Behind
the Scenes