Tour de Force Success Stories: Henriksen Butler Design Group

Tour de Force Success Stories: Henriksen Butler Design Group

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The Henriksen/Butler Design Group, a leading office and home furniture dealer with offices in several Western states, previously used a Windows based contact manager to coordinate and manage the activities of its sales force. However, difficulties with the software, such as synchronization issues and the need to enter information in both the contact manager and Outlook, caused account managers to gradually stop using it. Eventually, the company formed a search committee to choose a new solution. This committee decided to switch the company to Tour de Force, a CRM/SFA solution that integrates tightly with Outlook and Exchange and can be configured to match a company’s business processes.

After converting data from the old software over the weekend, the new software proved so much easier to use that account managers began recording all of their calls. Account managers could now enter all data into a single database, eliminating the need for synchronization and ensuring that valid information would always be available.

“Tour de Force saves time for our account managers and gives sales management much greater visibility into the sales process.” Paige Wright
VP of Business Development

“It makes it possible to fix problems and take advantage of opportunities much more quickly. These benefits should have a positive impact on our revenues although it’s too early to measure exactly how much at this point.”

Lengthy and complex sales process

The company’s sales process is often lengthy and complex due to the amount of time and number of people that may be involved in making furnishing decisions for a new office. The process begins when the company obtains a lead, often from a construction journal or a current client. The account manager then investigates the lead to determine important characteristics such as the time frame, major buying influencers, special requirements, etc. As time goes by, the account manager develops floor plans, a bill of materials, and quotations for the projects.

The scope of some projects and the length of time needed to follow them through to conclusion make it essential for management to maintain visibility into the sales process. Sales managers needed a way to track the status of each prospect to ensure that account managers were consistently following up on the most promising projects. Management was also concerned with an account manager leaving the company abruptly. A record of that account manager’s interactions with prospects and customers would be vital to ensure that a replacement could continue the sales process uninterrupted.

Previous customer management software

Henriksen/Butler’s first attempt to address the complexity of its sales process was to begin using ACT!, a leading contact management software package. With ACT!, each member of the sales force maintained his own personal database of customer contacts. Account managers were expected to record every interaction with customers, such as emails, phone calls, and personal visits. Because account managers maintained their own databases, all account managers were required to synchronize their database against the master database at corporate headquarters and to maintain estimates of the size and likelihood of winning each project as an aid in sales forecasting.

In the past, Wright said, the company often had problems keeping the ACT! databases synchronized. “We often discovered duplicate records or missing records or records in the wrong place,” she said. “Another problem was that the information in the database was often outdated because someone had not synchronized recently.” Some account managers objected to the need to maintain two contact databases; many account managers found the old software difficult to use, and in many cases, stopped entering their calls entirely. To prevent account managers from wasting time struggling with the software, management made its use optional.

Selection of new software and data conversion

Since so many account managers stopped recording their interactions with customers, management formed a project team to select new software. The primary goal was the same as before: to gain visibility into the sales process. The project team identified and evaluated several leading customer relationship management (CRM) packages. They asked vendors to give online demonstrations to the project team. Tour de Force stood out because its integration with Microsoft Exchange and Outlook made it familiar and easy to use and also eliminated the need for the sales force to update two sets of contact records.

The developer of Tour de Force, MRH Technology of Findlay, Ohio, offered to assist with converting the historical customer data from ACT! into the new application. Naturally, Henriksen/Butler wanted to minimize downtime and make the conversion experience as seamless as possible to users. The flexibility of Tour de Force made it possible to add fields to accommodate all the information stored in the original application. Eric Mattingley, Information Technology Manager for Henriksen Butler, configured the new software to match the company’s funnel process, which required changing several fields. He also added several fields, including one that provides account managers with a way to determine whether or not to send a Christmas card to a contact. The next step was matching up the fields in the two databases and issuing a command to start the conversion process. “We started the conversion Thursday night and by Monday morning had everyone up and running with the new program,” Mattingley said.

New software is used regularly by account managers

Account managers found the new software much easier to use from the beginning. The software works as an add-on to Microsoft Outlook, and since most account managers used Outlook extensively, the software was naturally easy to learn. Nearly all of the account managers are now recording every contact with their customers. To aid in the recording process, Tour de Force automatically logs every email to or from a customer, providing an easy to follow history of interactions with the customer. Account managers working away from the office can access the network-based software through a virtual private network (VPN), so their updates appear in the master database instantaneously. The ease with which account managers can log customer interactions and with which sales managers can see an overview of the sales process has finally provided management with the visibility it wanted from the beginning.

“Our account managers now enter complete information on their customers and prospects much more frequently than in the past,” Wright said. “The information appears immediately and the synchronization errors that troubled us in the past have disappeared. It is now much easier to identify overlooked opportunities and ensure that they are addressed. For example, I can see opportunities that haven’t moved into the next stage of the selling cycle for a long period of time. In some cases, I might determine that the lead is dead and should be removed from the selling cycle. In other cases, I might move the lead to a different account manager that might have time to give it more attention.”

Assigning tasks to account managers

“I have created shortcuts to all of our major opportunities,” Wright added. “I hold lead reviews every month with each member of our sales team and the software makes it easy to prepare for these meetings by getting a quick update on the status of every account. One of my favorite features of the software is the assigned task. It allows me to assign action steps to account managers and makes it easy to follow up to ensure they have been done. Tour de Force also saves time for the account managers by automatically filling in many of the fields in work orders, important forms that account managers must frequently create to request a layout from a designer.”

“MRH has been extremely responsive whenever we have run into problems. They know the software, know how we use it, and are very easy to reach."

"With our old program we would get someone different on the phone every time we called. When we call MRH, we get the same person every time. We are so happy with the performance of the software that we are beginning to make plans to integrate it with our business system. We also are planning to roll out the software to our design and project management team. They are not directly involved in the sales process but they interact with customers frequently. Having these users record their customer interactions will make it possible, for example, for an account manager to check on the status of an on-going project involving one of her customers.”