Technology apps help boosting local sales

It is the world’s second oldest profession, sales. Whether the person involved is called a customer service representative, client specialist, account executive or salesperson, the goal is still the same. Move a product or service as abundantly, quickly and efficiently as possible while setting the stage for repeat business.

Long gone are the days when a salesman traveled town-to-town or door-to-door to peddle his wares with no apparent plan of direction. Building relationships, entertaining, schmoozing, writing orders on paper invoices, filling out forms in triplicate, having to collect past due bills in person, and hoping to make quota so commission checks were not eaten up by expenses were always requirements of being a road warrior.

Building relationships, following up on orders and hoping to make commission remain a part of the job, otherwise technological applications have changed the world of commercial trade and how it is conducted.

Donnie Verdin, 37, has been working for Envoc for three weeks. He says the 14-year-old custom software development company, with its 10 employees, is on the cutting edge by providing a service to its clients whereby they and the general public can make use of increased exposure to generate greater sales by way of Internet software applications that transfer data from personal computers or iPads to smartphones.

Verdin, who refers to himself as director of client relations, lives and works in Houma while the company itself is based out of Baton Rouge. He defines his business as being a custom software development company that performs application and website hosting.

Devin Foret, 64, does not hesitate in referring to himself in the more traditional role of a salesman. As the Houma area sales representative for Harvey-based ACME Truck Lines, which has grown during the past 50 years to operate more than 2,000 vehicles across the country, Foret’s work offers a service that is seen using physical highways more obviously than the World Wide Web superhighway, but like Verdin he makes use of technology to get the job done.

Using a software package called Customer Relations Management, Foret sits in his truck after making a sales call and enters pertinent data into his Blackberry. “Once I enter [that information] into this, it goes into a server and my boss or anyone else that has access to this program can pull up and see where I’ve been all day, what I did, who I saw and what I discussed,” he said.

Foret identified the contrast of entering sales and other data into an electronic device to the past when an entire day could be spent catching up on paperwork.

Taking orders with software applications that permit the downloading of photos showing equipment to be transported, much of the guesswork has been removed from the transporting industry and other firms that make use of dedicated software applications. “I don’t even have to go to my office to do a sales report,” Foret said. “I love it.”

“The consulting services we do allows companies [to modify] off-the-shelf type pieces of software that can’t quite communicate with each other or do the things their company wants them to do,” Verdin said. “We provide a service that allows developers to write a source code that allows businesses to use these applications better, easier and be more productive.”

Making his sales pitch, more contemporarily known as client presentation, Verdin called on company owner, former oil and gas consultant Calvin Fabre, by computerized link to help describe their basic product.

Fabre, 45, and Verdin explained that custom designed software applications are being used by state offices and private industry for transferring old documents into electronic information and presenting new products with links that direct customers, by global positioning systems, to exactly where those products and services can be found.

“Most of the stuff we write is all Internet based,” Fabre said. “It lets people research. We started off writing inventory systems for oil rigs.”

Envoc has designed packages ranging from those that help auto dealers present what inventory they have available, to a system used to track deer on a 44,000-acre ranch, to upgrading a research database for government agencies.

“If I’m not familiar with a town and want to find a Cane’s for lunch, I can call [the company’s site] up on my smartphone and a GPS will tell me where to go to get to it,” Verdin said.

“This is our first attempt at using a sales force,” Fabre said regarding his company that posted $1 million in sales last year. “We are offering real-life software that makes people’s lives better.”

Fabre said that custom software could range in price from $2,500 to $250,000 depending on the size of the product.

Foret said for him, the money his employer invests in customized software applications has been well worth the investment.

“I can do work from anywhere in the world,” Foret said. He estimated that due to technology the job of a salesman yields a 30 to 40 percent gain in the number of calls made per week over what was accomplished just a few years ago and increases overall productivity.

“Yesterday, I had to do a load-out at one of my customers,” Foret said. “They emailed me, with an attachment, all the details of the load-out rather than me trying to take all that information over the phone while I’m driving.

“When I have a chance to stop I can read it on my BlackBerry and know exactly what is going on,” he said.

Foret said in terms of collecting payments from customers, technology helps resolve questions. “I can have corporate email me a list of invoices and when I go to a customer I have that documentation with me,” he said. “Previously, they would have to fax that to me, which meant I had to go to the office to receive faxes. Now, I can receive emails anywhere.”

Verdin described his job as a director of client relations as helping businesses conduct business and offering technology application packages that make selling and servicing customers more effective for other salesmen.

“What we are focusing on is a new software platform for companies to be able to write their own iPhone and Android apps,” Verdin said. “We’re talking in the next 3 to 4 years people accessing the Internet not from their computers but from their phones. If I’m not mistaken somewhere in the 20 to 30 percent range of people are using their phones to get Internet access. That’s only going to increase. Because of that, businesses need to understand this is a market they need to be in and ask how [they] market to consumers.”

In addition to marketing and basic sales, technology also helps these modern road warriors tabulate and report expenses more expediently and accurately than in the past, than when receipts, at least those that had not been lost, had to be organized and tabulated then attached to multiple forms to be turned over to accountants. “We do all that with this,” Foret said referring to his handheld communication device.

“You can do it all by going to the app store to see what you want to see,” Verdin said as he demonstrated the use of an iPad working in concert with his smartphone.

While electronic software applications have made the work of a salesman or client-relations representative easier, both Verdin and Foret contend that computers and smartphones can never replace face time with a client.

“Technology really does not make [sales] any easier, but it helps the field salesman” Foret said. “No matter how technology oriented we get you still need to have that face-to-face contact with the customer. Nothing will replace that.”

“To me, I’ve always been a client relationship builder,” Verdin said. “[Software applications] do not replace contact. They just help you become more productive.”

“A computer can either make your life easier or it can make it terrible,” Fabre said. “We try to make software that surprises and delights.”

No matter how long they have been in the profession, those persons that present products and services every day have found that software applications prove themselves profitable as tools that abundantly, quickly and efficiently make their work better for business.