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|  |  Dealer Profile: J&E's Office City April 4, 2008 J&E Office City, located in Metropolitan St. Louis, has an enviable base of business; 70-80% of their business comes from 70-80% of their customers. It wasn’t always that way, according to J&E President, Jerry Gibbs. “About 10 years ago we decided to take charge of where our business was coming from”, said Gibbs. “We knew that being in such a large metropolitan area and the competitive environment that comes with it; we needed to spread our business around. We didn’t want to be vulnerable with fewer accounts making up a large percent of our business” A significant part of the solution for J&E was to make an investment in GoldMine CRM and Sales Force Automaton software. “We needed a system” said Gibbs, “A system that would help us to manage customer sales history and customer information, and at the same time give us the capability to touch more customers and prospects with automated campaigns and other ongoing promotional programs. Not only could we sell more to existing customers but we had a program in place to increase our customer base.” Along with the addition of technology and more progressive and automated marketing, J&E assigned 20% of its commercial customers to its two (and long time) customer service people, Donna and Sherrie. Though they didn’t fit a typical sales person profile, they knew the customers and they knew the products. “GoldMine gave them a system, a process, to manage the customers and keep in touch with them at the most opportune time”, said Gibbs. “It’s like it became their virtual sales assistant. The combination of using sales history information from within GoldMine and scheduled touches, gave us significant customer penetration – we’ve tripled business from these accounts!” When Matt Gibbs decided to join his father a few years ago, he was fresh out of college and immersed in technology. Jerry wanted Matt to focus on new customer development and they leveraged GoldMine’s sales force automation features to help drive some prospecting programs. The automated follow up provided by GoldMine helps prospects in the pipeline from not falling through the cracks and has improved closing ratios. “I was into technology while in school so I was very comfortable when I joined Dad and realized I convert this knowledge into growing business and making money”, said Matt. All in all, the addition of technology to their sales and marketing programs has made a difference at J&E. “I couldn’t do without it”, said Jerry. “We even use it to help manage special orders; they just don’t fall through the cracks the way they used to.” In summary, Jerry attributes technology to playing a major role in their key areas of concentration: customer penetration, new customer development and customer reactivation. The end result has been a steady 8-10% growth, every year.
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