“Differentiating your products from your competitors can be hard at the best of times, but particularly when selling a commodity, such as steel. This is when the benefits of “knowing your customer” and improving sales efficiency really become apparent,” said David Fea, General Manager of Steelmark Queensland.

Improving sales by tracking customer purchase history and freeing salespeople from unnecessary administrative chores was the primary benefit SteelMark Queensland received from the recent installation of Sales Force Automation software tool, GoldMine 5.0.

SteelMark Pty Ltd is an Australian steel distribution and modifications company owned by the Smorgan Steel Group. SteelMark services approximately 400 customers in the Asia Pacific region and also operates a retail business for drop-in customers called “Town and Country Steel Centres”. SteelMark provides materials and services to a variety of different organisations including the Queensland City Cats (state ferries) and TJM (4WD products).

SteelMark Queensland installed GoldMine 5.0 to assist its sales representatives manage their Australian and Asia Pacific customers better and help reduce their unnecessarily heavy administrative workloads. Similar to many primary industry organisations, SteelMark previously used an antiquated handwritten system for tracking and recording customer behaviour. This resulted in a large proportion of the salesperson’s time each week being diverted from their core function - selling.

Taking steel into the 21st century

SteelMark’s salesforce was using outdated technology to track and record customer behaviour. Customer interactions and notes were handwritten on cards, shared by the sales representatives, product managers, sales managers and senior executives.

“The old system just wasn’t efficient anymore,” said Mr Fea. “We were not using technology effectively. For example, each week the reps had to produce a report for management manually based on the information handwritten on the customer contact cards, which was double the workload necessary”.

“Not only was this system outdated, it was impossible to maintain as no-one could read anyone else’s handwriting!”

SteelMark has installed GoldMine 5.0 across thirty desktops thus far and aims to have an additional twenty sales representatives plus management installed by November 2000.

Mobile Salesforce

“We really wanted to get our salesforce out there selling. Our sales force is now pretty remote – they carry notebooks around which contain all customer information and the end-of-week reports are now produced automatically,” said Mr Fea.

SteelMark’s salesforce can access up to six months of customer history from their notebooks allowing them to spend more time on the road. Previously, salespeople would have to return to the office to collect information on customers and to input data manually for the weekly sales reports.

“The info that’s flowing between the managers and the reps is now available to the sales guys on the floor or wherever they are. All the information is synchronised so that if any of the notebooks go down, we can just provide another notebook with the same information,” said Mr Fea.

Improved customer satisfaction

GoldMine 5.0 has allowed SteelMark to develop profiles of customers purchasing habits. SteelMark now has the ability to undertake proactive sales with customers based on accurately matching the customers needs (from the account history) with SteelMark’s products – the first step toward developing complete CRM solutions.

“It is now much easier to draw out information on each customer. For example, if we have an opportunity to sell some products a bit cheaper, we can work out which customer buys those products the most then approach them,” said Mr Fea. “We have witnessed improved customer satisfaction through this proactive approach”.

“Automating the sales force and having an accurate customer database are important tools when building a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) structured organisation,” said Archie Wilson, Vice President Asia Pacific, for FrontRange Solutions. “SteelMark’s implementation of GoldMine 5.0 is its first step towards building a complete customer relationship solution and will provide a tangible point of difference for its customers”.

Customer acquisition

SteelMark intends to use GoldMine 5.0 to assist in customer acquisition as well as retention, by developing a database of potential clients with communication details and future action required. Both management and sales representatives can access this information.

“In the past we’ve done a fair bit of outbound telemarketing and manually filled in a database of potential customers. We haven’t tried this yet but plan to use GoldMine to develop a database of potential clients with contact details and linked to follow-up required in the future. It should be easier now to create a database and save information that was getting lost or forgotten previously,” said Mr Fea.

Patience is a virtue

“One of the key reasons why the implementation of GoldMine 5.0 in SteelMark was so successful was the precise customisation and patience practiced with training and implementation,” said Mark Henry, Managing Director, GoldMine Solutions Partner, Henry Management. “They had waited long enough for this automation and were willing to spend time trailing the product with the salesforce to determine the right fields to modify.”

“Steelmark ITS’ created its own training program to assist the sales people, which was a major factor in the implementation’s success. Many companies in Australia do not use software automation tools to their full potential due to lack of knowledge or training. Much of the time, sales force automation tools end up being glorified contact managers.”