Perry Blanc is Times Square’s most famous florist and people from all walks of life flock to his door all day. You even take online orders to make someone’s day special. Perry’s employees are as fresh as his flowers and he completes every order with pinpoint perfection. However, it’s been getting way too many orders lately and things have gotten a bit awkward. There have been two consistent wrong deliveries in a week, plus late deliveries and one wrong message that was in a crown (!). There was also a case where one of his employees lost a slip that had the details of a contact. Perry’s reputation is on the line and he simply wants to get his business back on track. Perry talks to his friend Mark, who is a CRM consultant. After hearing about Perry’s problems, Mark is clear that sales force automation is what Perry’s flower business urgently needs.

Problem 1: customer details are lost

During peak seasons, quite a few orders were lost. Sometimes the busy staff on the phone didn’t write down the customer’s phone number or delivery address!

Immediate action from Mark:

It hurt Mark to see orders being lost just because customer details were not being recorded. Perry urgently needed a solution to manage his customers’ contact details. Mark set up a simple CRM system for Perry that would allow his staff to record customer details only once so that the next time a particular customer called, Perry’s staff would automatically retrieve their records simply by looking up the name or phone number. contact.

Problem 2: loss of order details and lack of communication

For custom made special orders, many times overworked staff forgot to pass on the details to the guy who did the special flower arrangements, sometimes they even ended up sending the wrong details.

With the new CRM system, when a customer regularly placed orders for orchid bouquets, the system would have all the records (color, size and arrangement) of the order history along with the contact details. Perry staff now only need to choose from the order list when the next requirement arrives. Once an order is taken, an email and SMS is automatically sent to the guy doing the bouquet. So no more worry about lost orders!

Problem 3: Missing invoice and therefore missing payments

Philips & Co. places regular orders for bouquets, the installments of which are settled on a monthly basis. His CEO had asked for a few extra bouquets this month during his delegate’s visit, but Perry’s staff did not include them on his monthly bill.

Now every time an order is placed, Perry’s staff logs it into the system and this is automatically synced with billing software that would have an invoice ready to send to the customer. Perry staff now also know which of their customers need special attention by looking at the payments they make – fast, high-value, and high-frequency customers now get very special treatment no matter what time they call.

Problem 4: not knowing which team member needs help with training

Perry had hired two new people who were on the phone the moment he heard about the opening of the competitor’s fancy flower bouquet down the street. In addition, it also has a sales team that handles large corporate orders. However, things haven’t improved and now you need to know which of your team members need the extra training and care to receive orders.

With the new system in place, Perry can now easily structure sales commissions based on the sales activity details recorded for each executive. Out-of-the-box reports also help you compare performance across team members. On the same CRM platform, Perry now occasionally shares training materials, discount ideas, and customer success stories that help his executives perform better at work.

Problem 5: forecast sales and have enough inventory

One of the biggest problems affecting the business was a shortage of stocks. Just when a promising customer came in, there were no more orchids left. Perry would sometimes get overcrowded to avoid such situations, but depending on how hot the summer was, the flowers would end up wilting after a few hours.

Now Perry predicts how many stocks he would need by looking at charts showing daily / weekly / monthly order history. You even know how many stocks you would need per bouquet / flower / color / type; you are now easily identifying and planning in-season and off-season times.

Problem 6: Lack of follow-up on queries

Corporate orders are a great reward for Perry. Conference requests organized in the nearby community room would give you enough sales to cover the expenses of a full quarter. The only problem is that it wouldn’t follow up on inquiries that would result in orders after 2-3 months.

The return on investment of the CRM system was achieved with this unique ability to remind sales executives when they needed to follow up on an inquiry at a later date. Huge corporate reserves (and jackpot winnings) were now easily closed and delivered. Perry’s sales and marketing teams now even purchase lists for email campaigns conducted from the CRM system.

Having seen how Perry employs sales force automation, let’s summarize the main components:

  1. Customer and contact management: contact details need to be entered only once.
  2. Order management: automatic email and SMS on each order.
  3. Invoice management and payment monitoring: CRM system synchronized with the invoicing software and vice versa
  4. Sales team performance evaluation: sales commissions and training sessions structured in sales activity reports.
  5. Sales forecast and inventory management: detailed charts of daily / weekly / monthly order history
  6. Lead Management – Email campaigns and follow-up reminders required

So that’s the story of Perry the florist. Now, getting to your business …

Can you see the correlation between Perry’s problems and his own business? And how can sales force automation help you? Well then, give it a thought, while I create a set of CRM tools that you can consider in my next post.

________________________________________________________________