Tour de Force Success Stories: The Neff Group

Tour de Force Success Stories: The Neff Group

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CRM Software Helps Implement Step-by-Step Sales Process; Sales Rise by 20%

Neff Group Distributors, Inc., an industrial automation distributor, developed a step-by-step sales process designed to identify prospects, locate decision makers, and gain customers for its pneumatic and electrical products. Neff recognized that by using the company’s existing tools, following this new process would take considerable portions of the account managers’ time, raising doubts as to whether it would be fully implemented.

To guide account managers through the new process, the company selected a software package that integrated with Microsoft Outlook and was easy to customize. The software made it easy for account managers to quickly provide required information and deliver live reports to sales managers.

“Our sales have risen 20% since we implemented the new process and the new software,” said Don Norman, Director of Sales and Market Development for Neff Group Distributors, Inc. “We can’t attribute all of that gain to either one but it is clear that both have played a major role.”

The Neff Group provides a complete line of pneumatic equipment consisting of valves, cylinders, vacuum pumps, gauges, and air treatment components; and electronic control equipment such as pick and place automation devices, programmable logic controllers, industrial sensors, servo systems, and other electronic control products to original equipment manufacturers and end users in Indiana, Michigan, Northern Ohio, and Wisconsin.

Integrating separate teams with their own tools

The Neff Group was formed by combining three separate companies, each with its own sales organizations.

“The sales teams of each of the companies used their own methods of tracking customers and opportunities,” Don said. “Various people used ACT, Outlook, or simply tracked their activities on paper. Some of these methods were efficient and others were not. One of the greatest challenges that we faced as we began the process of integrating our sales teams was this hodgepodge of different tools made it very difficult to evaluate our sales teams activities. Also, we were in the process of determining best practices of our top account managers and our intention was to migrate these best practices across the organization. But this would have been difficult or even impossible using a mixture of different tools.”

Neff is a sales-driven company that gives the sales team the responsibility of identifying companies that are prospects for its highly specialized products. The next step is identifying the decision makers at these companies and meeting with them to identify sales opportunities. For a typical $50,000.00 opportunity, there are several people involved in the decision and each need to be contacted. The Account Managers consults with their technical resources to identify the right products to win these opportunities. This process may also include providing these companies with assistance in their design process and working with them to optimize the productivity and reliability of their processes.

Selecting a CRM solution

Neff looked at several of the leading CRM software packages but discovered that they were all marketing oriented; their default process involved the use of direct mail or a similar tool to generate leads that were then distributed to the sales force. While some software offered an opportunity manager designed to help implement the type of sales-driven process that Neff wanted to implement, it was usually an add-on product that was not tightly integrated with the core software. Don heard that MRH Technology was developing Tour de Force, a CRM software package designed to implement opportunity-driven sales process. He discovered that Tour de Force was designed as an add-on to the Microsoft Outlook, which was already used by some of his sales team.

"Also, our account managers are sales experts rather than computer experts so they need something easy to use."

“I looked into Tour de Force and discovered that it would be easy to modify the tool to fit the process that we were developing,” Don said. “Also, our account managers are sales experts rather than computer experts so they need something easy to use. I felt that anything that worked within Outlook would be easy for them to pick up.”

“The new CRM software helps our account managers by guiding them through the best practices that we have developed,” Don said.

Neff configured templates in TDF that include the information account managers need to move new business opportunities forward. Account managers can set up an account in a few minutes by filling in a form from pre-configured menu choices, using drop down selections and check boxes whenever possible to minimize the need for typing. Neff’s sales process requires specific information on each new business opportunity. Tour de Force makes it easy for the account manager to enter and manage the information and for his or her Sales Manager to be aware of all new business development for the sales team.

Identifying decision makers

The account manager is then prompted to identify key players within the prospect company in areas such as project management, engineering, maintenance and purchasing. The software also prompts account managers to determine the role of different people within the prospect’s organization and classify them as decision-maker, champion, influencer, etc. The account manager then meets with these people and identifies opportunities to sell Neff’s solutions. Each meeting’s significant activities and action items are entered into the software. The software provides decision points that cause good new business opportunities to move forward in the sales process, and poor opportunities to fall out of the process altogether.

The information contained in the CRM system appears in reports the moment it is entered and can be accessed by authorized managers wherever they may be. For example, the sales manager can identify new business opportunities that are not moving forward in the sales process and determine steps to be taken to make further progress, or perhaps reconsider whether the prospect is truly viable. A sales manager can easily determine the number of new business opportunities that each account manager has brought into the process and the proportion of time spent working on new versus existing customers, allowing the sales manager to ensure that account managers are managing their time most effectively. Reports are also available that improve the sales process by helping managers evaluate which practices are working and which practices are not working.

Growing sales 20% in a tough market

“Our focused sales efforts have increased our success rate substantially above where we were before we started,” Don concluded. “Our sales have grown 20% in tough market conditions. We are not sure what proportion of that growth is due to our new process but we think it is substantial. We have identified 9 or 10 significant wins that are directly tied to our new process. We have also noticed that the Neff Group offices that have performed the best have been the ones that have most aggressively implemented the new process.”

Don says that their new sales process would work without Tour de Force, but would require so much time and effort that it is questionable how closely it would be followed.

“Tour de Force saves a considerable amount of time on the part of account managers and sales managers,” Don said. “The CRM software greatly reduces the manual labor by letting our people check off boxes and pick items from menus instead of filling out forms or typing in information. When the forms are completed, it incorporates them into live reports that give our managers up to the minute information on our sales efforts. Our management team now has complete visibility into our sales process, making it easy to track the progress of individual members of our sales team and also make much better forecasts.”