2003 – 2006: Collaborative CRM
MULTI-LEVEL, MULTI-CLIENT AND MULTI-CHANNEL AUTOMOTIVE INDUSTRY COLLABORATIVE CRM
Executive on Demand Positions:
President, Vice President Sales & Marketing and traveling sales personnel at automotive manufacturers, distributors and jobbers, and sales agency
Project Outline & Project Outcome:
The cost containment strategies commonly referred to as “downsizing” or “rightsizing” initiated in the 1990′s continued as we entered a new century. Manufacturers identified that they could offer their products through an outsourced sales agency rather than a dedicated corporate sales force. This trend required existing and new sales agencies to rethink the services they provided in order to get the best manufacturers as their customers. The ability to gain the representation rights to a national company, its brand and its products can be a very lucrative opportunity for the sales agency. To do this a sales agency needed to truly provide a true differentiation strategy with measurable and achievable results.
A friend that owns and operates a manufacturer’s sales agency that serves the automotive aftermarket for auto parts, accessories and service repair, contacted me and asked if I had any ideas as to how they could re-brand and reposition themselves so that they can be the agency of choice. I advised that in order to do this I needed to better understand their current value proposition and redefine it to meet the needs of the market place. To better understand the need for the change one must understand the differences between a corporate run and an agency run sales force. A detailed review was initiated of the roles, types of activities, accountability and responsibilities and the management of a sales force for both a corporate and agency sales management model.
The corporate model has as its major advantage a dedicated sales force that was focused solely on products that they manufactured. In addition the manufacturer also have supporting roles that ensure that the sales team are up-to-date on products, that they have timely and accurate customer sales reports, competitive market information and a management structure that continuously measures their performance.
The agency sales model differs greatly. Firstly, they have two customers to manage: the manufacturer and the customers to whom they are selling the manufacturers products. They must do this in order to provide an affordable nationally based representative sales force that is rewarded for services on a commission basis. Secondly, the manufacturers do not provide timely reporting of the sales activities (usually 4 to 6 weeks after a period end) as a result the agency cannot react to a change in sales pattern in a timely manner. Lastly, because existing customer relationship management (CRM) programs were designed for the corporate sales management structure they were unsuitable for the growing outsourced sales agency business model.
For this reason a new CRM model was designed for the agency. A local software company was identified and working with this team a sales agency CRM system was created. The design criteria included the following features:
- The program must be easy-to-use. Many of the software based programs required expensive training just to understand the basics
- The product must have online support/tutorials to assists the users in its functionality
- Real time centrally managed internet based data management
- CRM program must be accessible using a software program on laptops/desktops and via a web browser for remote access
- Customer contact files, meeting reports and financial reporting details by manufacturer and purchasing customer be available and have access restriction capability
- The sales personnel laptops that are used for generating the sales contact reports must synchronize automatically whenever they are connected to an internet connection
- Must have capability to provide different and secure access to support three types of management review
- Sales agency management must be able to review for sales personnel scheduling, account activity and performance in as close to real time as possible
- Manufacturer must be able to review customer contact activity and communicate when necessarily directly with the sales representative (manufacturer on has access to sales reports that are associates with their products only)
- The buying customer (Warehouse Distributor) to allow them to review the agency support they get for all the products they they purchase from the broad range of manufacturers that the agency represents
- Report management program must provide flexibility in design to support onscreen or printed report viewing
The development of the customized sales agency CRM program was successfully launched over an 18 month period. Each of the needed attributes required were scheduled for monthly updates in order to ensure that the program mandates were met and that proper training be provide on a timely basis to avoid overwhelming the users. In addition, real time use of the program provided valuable timely feedback and any issues could be immediately corrected or planned in the next release.
The implementation of the sales agency based support program delivered on the differentiation mandate. The manufacturer’s management got the ability to review sales activity in real time, just like they did when they operated a corporate sales team. The sales agency was better equipped to support its sales team in the field as they had access to weekly financial results from the manufacturers (originally the results were provided 4 to 6 weeks after the period end). Lastly the buyer customer could get a view of the field support that was provided to them for each of the products and the companies that they were purchasing products from on one screen.