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|  |  Dealer Profile: Covey Basics February 23, 2009 "We couldn't live without it"! That's the reaction from Janice Smith, customer service and sales manager at Covey Basics in Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada, when asked what GoldMine CRM software has meant to their company since its implementation three years ago. Information sharing about current customers and prospects across virtually the entire company is an advantage Smith couldn't be more emphatic about. "We all just know more about what's going on with the customers we have, and that's made a huge difference in maintaining a solid relationship with them", Smith said. The "all" that Smith mentions when relating to who is sharing the information includes everyone from customer service to sales, purchasing, accounting, warehousing and top management. "No customer falls through the cracks - they're touched often", Smith went on to say. When asked the important question about how all of the information being shared has resulted in increased business, Smith couldn't be more emphatic again. "We sell them more because we know what products they buy and don't buy and we target them accordingly". A big help in identifying a customer's product mix is GoldMine's connectivity to Covey's industry back-end system called Winsol; every night Winsol updates GoldMine with up to date customer buying history. "We're always on top of not only products bought by different categories such as supplies, jan-san and furniture, but we know when someone's ordering has dropped off overall and we can be in touch and take some action", Smith said. A significant end result for Covey has been deeper customer penetration and the ensuing higher customer profitability. And this comes from storing information beyond sales history; it entails every customer-facing GoldMine user contributing to updating specific customer needs and problems and other areas such as brand and model of office equipment. When asked Covey's secret to making sure almost all customer and prospect information gets into GoldMine in a timely and useful manner, Smith's answer was: "We make sure calls are logged into GoldMine immediately"! And activity logging isn't limited to just sales and customer service; purchasing works with sales people to log activity pertaining to customer bids and accounting makes sure that everyone knows what's going on with customer collection calls. The culmination of all of the information management, according to Smith, is basically, "We know more about customers than ever before - it makes a competitive difference, especially against the box stores like Staples. We can come close enough in price where all of the great relationships we build can make a difference." Smith was quick to point out that their use of GoldMine's functionality was also very instrumental in new customer development - being able to manage prospecting processes and help increase the ratio of customer acquisition. Covey has also taken advantage of GoldMine's e-mail marketing capabilities. They do promotional and informational e-mail blasting as well as sending e-mail flyers to specific customers and prospects as well as selected groups. They have even integrated e-mail marketing into GoldMine automated processes and campaigns. In summary, when asked the key to Covey's ongoing success in their GoldMine implementation, her answer is: "keep pushing GoldMine's advantages and get buy in from everyone".
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