Tim Szczygiel
Even though plenty of office technology dealers are already familiar with SalesChain, the developer of SalesChain sales and dealer management software, there’s still some dealers throughout the U.S. and Canada who might not be as knowledgeable about the company or its products. In case you fall into that group, SalesChain’s integrated suite of products offers comprehensive sales management tools, including sales analytics, dealer pricing, proposal and order documentation, sales rep commissions, advanced forecasting and delivery workflow automation.
To get an even better idea about SalesChain I recently I had the opportunity to speak with SalesChain President Tim Szczygiel about the company, its products, and why dealers across the U.S. and Canada select them over other options.
What’s new at SalesChain?
Szczygiel: So much is new. More dealers are using a broader feature set to better manage all aspects of the selling and order fulfillment process. Forecasting and sales rep activity management is critically important to dealers today. As is our commissions module. Dealers spend way too much time managing and paying commissions. Our integrated suite works together, saving time and provides recognized value. It offers everything from advanced forecasting all the way to dealer pricing, and documentation, and now with the commissions module dealers have one platform to work with. It’s a great product for us.
How does the commissions module work, especially as the industry has moved more towards a services model, which can be relatively more complicated than when simply selling hardware?
Szczygiel: We use the term ‘bundled solution selling’ to encompass everything from hardware, services, MPS, and software. The toolset that we’re providing to dealers starts with the forecasting and sales process and works all the way through dealer pricing and commissions. It’s configurable for every dealer. That’s the key because everybody does these things a little differently.
The past year and a half we spent a tremendous amount of time developing the product and focusing on the prospecting and forecasting functions. Forecasting, for example, is different when selling bundled solutions than it is for a traditional hardware deal. We have three distinct methodologies for forecasting within SalesChain. The best is focused on solutions selling.
I say to dealers who sell bundled solutions you just don’t flip the switch on and magically have sales come in the door. In order to transition the organization into selling solutions you have to start by training people and then you need the tools to manage them.
You can’t sell bundled solutions if people aren’t talking about them with the prospective customers. You have to look at the reps and look at the forecast and say here’s an opportunity. Starting at that point with the forecast, we’re able to see if this rep is talking about hardware, IT solutions, software, or MPS. Using our proposal and order pricing system, when reps price deals, the forecast is automatically updated, saving time and making the forecast that much more accurate. This detail progresses through the selling cycle and the closing of the deal, and then the rep is paid a commission on it.
If a manager is talking to reps and they look at that forecast in their weekly review, and say this guy has great sales volume, but it’s still all hardware, they now know that they have to transition that rep into selling bundled solutions.
It sounds like the key to your success to date is that all these pieces work together.
Szczygiel: Yes, so as a sales person prices a deal that transaction automatically backloads into the forecast so the forecast continues to get updated and becomes more accurate as the sale progresses through the sales cycle.
If this sales person projects they’re going to sell $25,000 of hardware, $15,000 worth of software, and $17,000 of IT solutions, they can now price the deal to represent that transaction. Then when the [dealer principal] does the commissions, they can say, for the $25,000 worth of hardware I’m going to pay the hardware rep and the down the street rep 30 percent of gross profit. If they have an IT sales rep or an MPS specialist who is working with their down the street reps to sell IT solutions, they might have a different commission program altogether. You can bundle a commission on the same transaction very simply. Say the hardware rep is 30 percent of GP, the IT services rep may get 3 percent of the revenue up front and very importantly, 20 percent of the revenue on a recurring basis for every payment received over the next 30-36 months.
Our structured commission module pays people up front for their activities while the recurring module allows you to pay people over time, all in the same transaction, so it’s very flexible.
What’s the tipping point that causes dealers to go with a sales and dealer management solution like SalesChain?
Szczygiel: Dealers are dealing with commissions every day and most have been doing them on spreadsheets. That’s an extremely painful process. Those who have tried other systems have found them extremely complicated or they’re not industry specific. At best they’re completely separate systems so they’re not integrated with anything that’s going on in the business therefore they have to do everything manually again.
In some respects dealers have wanted the commissioning process to be a little mysterious so they could control it. Things have changed and now everything is at the fingertips on a mobile device or on a PC and reps know exactly what they’re doing. With our product when the sales rep enters a business card for the first time in the prospecting system or imports from EDA data, that data is used throughout the sales process in everything from letters to contract details. All that information is entered once and accurately, and the efficiency is through the roof.
Let’s make one thing perfectly clear, SalesChain is not a CRM system, right?
Szczygiel: CRM is a term we never use because people hear CRM and think Act!, Goldmine, and Salesforce. We’re an integrated business management solution for the sales and order fulfillment organization. Integrating data from all of a dealerships systems and partners is critically important. Our motto is simple: We can (and must) get all of a dealer’s data, from any system they have, in order to deliver the productivity they expect. We are very good at integrating with other systems.
What industry trends are affecting the latest iterations of your software?
Szczygiel: Mobile technology is everywhere. Sales people are everywhere. They’re selling everywhere, thinking everywhere, so SalesChain has to be everywhere. We just launched the second generation of our mobile platform. It’s cross technology and browser compatible so any device can use it. Now sales people can go and see the Dream Report before they walk into a customer and know more about the customer than the customer knows about themselves in real time.
Many of our leasing company partners can now see real-time buyouts on their mobile devices through one application and that application is SalesChain.
Even though the company and product is called SalesChain, it’s not just sales using it?
Szczygiel: Everyone in an organization that “touches” a customer is focused on sales, one way or another. We work with ops managers, finance managers, and service managers because everybody touches sales or is involved with it or is supporting the process. All these communication processes—spreadsheets, workflow processes, and manual processes—that exist to support sales are things that we go in and do away with. Dealers like that.
I understand there are some heavy hitters in the dealer community using SalesChain?
Szczygiel: Dealers such as LDI Toolbox, Blue Technologies, Keystone Digital, the Gordon Flesch Company, and Meridian Imaging Systems are using our system. These are not mom and pop businesses. These are top-line, tier-one dealers who have seen a significant increase in productivity. Look at the time an owner, sales manager, finance manager, sales reps, ops people spend doing commissions. Cut that in half and that’s what you get with SalesChain.
Are you a better fit for certain types of dealers (i.e., small midsize versus larger dealers?)
Szczygiel: We’re a good fit for most anybody in a sense that our product is scalable. We have a number of smaller dealers with three to five sales people. They’re obviously not going to buy a full-blown system. We try to stick with people who are big enough to have an ERP system. If a company is running on OMD, Lacrosse, e-automate, JobTrak, any of these systems, they’re probably big enough for us.
How is the product priced?
Szczygiel: SalesChain is a cloud based solution and dealers pay a subscription fee for use. Being a cloud based platform is our biggest strength because it allows us to be responsive and flexible for our customers. We upgrade our system every month with new features and it would be impossible to do that any other way.
How many users do you have?
Szczygiel: We have thousands of users with dealers in 45 states and three Canadian provinces. We have some of the top Canon, Konica, and Ricoh dealers across the country. The numbers that are important to me is that most of our customers have been with us for over 5 years. There are plenty more dealers out there for us to get.
What’s next for SalesChain?
Szczygiel: We will continue to introduce solutions for mobile devices and make our system better and easier for us to serve dealers in a broad fashion. Our commissions module is getting better and better. Every dealer who needs a commissions module and dealing pricing system needs to look at SalesChain.
