A Funny Thing Happened…

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Wholesale distribution software in 1977 was considered fantastic if a wholesaler could create a sales order without a good ball point pen. Now Sales Orders are being input from the Cloud using iPads, iPhones, Surfaces and Androids. Today these new hardware and software advances are beginning to revolutionize both the wholesale industry and the software industry that serves them.  It was not that long ago when there had not been any advances in these two industries that were JAW DROPPING.

 

In 2007 the wholesalers and the software industry that serves them were delivered a wake-up call. That call took the form of a mind numbing and profit draining recession. The turmoil caused by the recession had everyone scrambling to survive this awful downturn.   Somewhere in midst of this battle for survival there was a far distant beat that was doggedly persistent.  That beat was caused by the plodding of two horses the new sheriff in town was riding. Those horses were called Business Analytics and Customer Relations Management
 

As soon as Business Analytics was available the large wholesalers latched onto this technology with abandonment.   They combined ‘getoutofhere” web sites with this new technology and they could see every customer large and small in their new, 360° view.

  • What was this customer buying?
  • How often did they buy a product?
  • Are there products that this customer had stopped buying?
  • Are the customer’s sales and their margins in decline or are they rising?

The VPs in these large distribution companies were charged with gathering this Analytical Information. However they had a conundrum and it was: How could they get this fantastic information to their sales people? CRM was the answer. With CRM the Vice President could quickly parse the customer information that Business Analytics provided, out to their sales force. With the combination of Business Analytics, CRM, their Web sites and a recession that was dropping small wholesalers in their corporate laps, they became a juggernaut.

 

Then a funny thing happened on the way out of the recession.

A firm in North Carolina, SALES MATRIX, was watching the phenomenon.  They had developed a Customer Analytical Software Tool that they called SWOT.

That stands for

Strengths                  What is the customer buying?

Weaknesses             What have they stopped buying from our company?

Opportunities          What are like customers buying?

Threats                      Is this customer profitable?

 

When this Analytical Tool came onto the market it was performing beyond expectation.  Then Sales Matrix took the process one step further. They integrated Business Analytics and CRM and they call that product SWOT CRM.  Within a matter of seconds, without switching from one program to another, a sales person could identify a sales opportunity with SWOT and without any special effort they could use their IPAD, I PHONE, or Android device and send a marketing message to the customer, directly out of SWOT CRM.

 

The Customer Information that was delivered by SWOT CRM and the Customer Communication that was sent out from SWOT CRM were both done by the sales person.  No Vice President was required because SALES MATRIX has aimed SWOT CRM directly towards the street or counter sales person.  This makes this tool perfect for the small to mid-sized wholesaler who has to compete with the information gathered by the large wholesale company.

 

Pricing: Rather than make trying to compete with the large CRM houses that use five figures for pricing, Sales Matrix priced their SWOT CRM package so that any size company could utilize the software. A company who has two or three sales reps can afford to install and support SWOT CRM.

SWOT CRM INTEGRATION

Professional Data Systems, Inc. is now integrating SWOT CRM with their 4GL Relational Data Base ERP software, called ProTrac.  The ProTrac customers, across the country, will be able to hand their sales people the SWOT CRM software tool. SWOT CRM’s data base includes all invoices from the last 30 months. The SWOT CRM information can be delivered and used with less than an hour’s worth of training.

eye imageSWOT CRM literally takes the covering off of the company disk drives so that the sales reps can use the customer information that is buried there, to sell more products and improve Customer Service to all of their customers, large and small.

 

Click on the link below and watch the video to see how –

Your sales people can see your customers in a 360° view, using SWOT CRM.

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