Together with his brother Martin (58), Ton (56) conquered the niche market of insulated vans. Ton takes care of sales, Martin takes care of the workshop. In recent years, the company has grown faster. Ton: ‘I began to notice that I was the only one who knew everything about our customers. I am a walking address book, with 1,600 contacts. This makes me far too vulnerable. I love riding my motorbike, but what if I have an accident? We are now also responsible for 15 employees’.
Room for improvement
Refrigerated vehicles are mostly built for the hotel and catering industry, and the lockdown meant that work was decreasing. This gave the brothers room to think about professionalisation. We didn’t have enough insight into our sales contacts. Moreover, I was spending a lot of time on sales projects that yielded little. My motor buddy, a commercial director at a large IT company, advised me to use Salesforce. Salesforce then linked us with Welisa.
Understanding what is going on with the customer
Welisa asked the right questions to find out what he needed, says Ton. I hoped they understood what I meant, because we had to discuss everything online and I would have preferred to show them around our workshop. But they did, Salesforce was delivered quickly and it works really well. Requests via our website now go straight into Salesforce. I can see which phase we are in for each customer. We have insight into what is going on in our customer’s minds, because I now ask questions that I previously forgot to ask, thanks to some fill-in-the-blank fields. As a result, I have a clearer idea of the question and I also know why we get an order or why we don’t.’
Positive relationship management
While some say that Salesforce is an aggressive sales tool, I find it a relaxed way of gathering information. It really is relationship management in the positive sense of the word. When I used to get someone on the phone about a Mercedes we had converted a year ago, I never knew exactly what it was about. Now I can conjure it up straight away and I don’t have to call back later. That is also nice for the customer. For my brother, Salesforce is ideal for providing service, because he knows exactly when a customer is due for a service or a new lease car. The direct insight makes us agile.
