Exidor Ltd has been using sales-i since 2013 and become advocates of the software, using it daily to drive their sales growth.
- 50% UK market share
- 30% of products exported
- 99% of products assembled in the UK
The Overview.
Based in Cannock in the heart of England, Exidor Ltd have been manufacturing a comprehensive, high specification range of panic and emergency exit hardware, door closers and builder’s ironmongery for over 80 years.
The company assembles 99% of its products in the UK with materials sourced locally. They currently have over 50% UK market share in commodities and over 30% of their range of products are exported all over the world. Their commitment to quality and efficient customer service has helped to ensure that they stay the number one supplier in the UK.
Exidor Ltd’s business model is to sell their products through distributors, architectural ironmongers and locksmiths. Nothing is sold directly to end users.
The Challenge.
Exidor Ltd had the challenge of maintaining a profitable business in a static market. The market is also highly regulated due to safety issues and product quality was always the priority over finding new sales. Nigel Taylor, Exidor Ltd’s Sales and Marketing Director added: “We work in a tough market and we needed to support our product range to keep our customers happy, but this removed our focus from growing our sales channels.”
To continue sales growth and keep their market share, Nigel and the team wanted to focus on creating new products and identify additional cross-sales. To ensure a successful sales programme, Nigel states: “We needed a system that helps our sales team to work in a ‘FMCG’ style, with driven objectives, where each customer is seen within 8-week cycles. In addition, we also needed a system to identify sales drop offs early to ensure our current market share didn’t diminish.”
Nigel goes on to say: “Customer relationships are pivotal in our market, a well-organised and prepared sales team is a must for us.”
The Solution.
Nigel quickly recognised that he wasn’t going to solve his challenges purely by using Evolution (their back-office system) as this was very accounts driven rather than sales driven, so couldn’t provide the visibility that was needed. Realising this, Nigel decided to give sales-i a try and states: “Generally, I choose software solutions based on their fit with our sales process, value for money and the ease and ability to get data into the system.” Nigel continues by saying: “Connecting Evolution to sales-i ticked all three boxes and has been a huge success since its arrival. Having a robust CRM and a system that automates the team’s sales calls and figures has allowed us to go back to a five-day selling week.”
Nigel mentions: “The implementation was fairly straight-forward, and the sales team took to sales-i quickly with myself ensuring its use.”
"sales-i is great, it’s real value for money."
Nigel Taylor, Sales and Marketing Director
The Results.
Over 7 years on from going live with sales-i, Exidor Ltd’s use of the software is as strong as ever.
When quizzed about the areas of sales-i that give the team the most benefit, Nigel mentioned a number of points.
“Targets is great, everything we do as a team revolves around this. I can set each individual a target to hit and track every aspect of their performance against these. It gives me and the team real focus.” Nigel also mentioned that the call reports feature is a clear winner as he can break down how many calls are made against meetings booked and customers won, something a lot of sales managers struggle to achieve.
The Exidor Ltd team doesn’t stop at just these features either. Nigel says: “The sales team loves Autopilot because it automatically creates sales reports, sales insights and combines previous notes by simply creating a call in the diary. Autopilot has saved a huge amount of time by removing monotonous admin tasks.” Another area of sales-i that the team uses is Enquiries. Nigel loves Enquiries for his role: “I have a host of saved reports that I delve into at the end of each month to track sales performance. It’s so easy for me to report to the board and to identify issues before they become a problem.”
The Future.
sales-i has become an integral part of Exidor Ltd’s sales process. Nigel filled us in, saying, “The team here at Exidor Ltd know sales-i really well and are daily users so the buy in has been excellent.
“Our next step is to utilise sales-i to its full extent and start to use features such as Campaigns to prioritise our calls and further identify who has bought one product but not a complementary one.”
From a personal point of view, Nigel mentioned that he will continue to explore the reporting function so that he knows exactly what’s happening within his sales team and help Exidor Ltd remain a market leader for door closers and panic escape devices.