Key Factors in Running a Successful Flooring Business
Carpet King is a major flooring retailer in San Gabriel
valley with two 5000+ SF stores and two warehouses with 35000 SF
combined in two locations. Carpet King has been in retail business
for more than 20 years. Carpet King has been aggressively
marketing its brand and services through local radio, newspaper
ads and trade shows.
Carpet King has a sales team of 25 representatives in two
locations. Each sales rep is responsible for following up
leads/accounts, measuring, estimating, material orders and
installation schedules. The store management was using paper
forms to track call-in and walk-in prospects, conversion and
sales data by marketing sources, but it has been proven to be
hard to collect and enforce due to the dynamic nature of each
sales reps and it is time-consuming to fill the forms and
compile the data into readable forms.
Another challenge with operation was the installation
scheduling as the company normally has about 25 jobs per days
with about 16 installation crews, so there has been schedule
conflicts, misplaced work orders and diagrams, material short,
and other errors, as all of these paper works were exchanged
through faxes and phones.
Vendor product catalogs with update-to-date pricing are
important for retail. As product pricing is changed more often.
Calling vendor reps for latest pricing and product specs is
time-consuming and waiting for vendor rep call-back delays the
accurate quotations, therefore consumers buying decision.
The Solution
Carpet King turned to FloorLink.net CRM solution to automate
the above challenges since its inception in June 2006. Floor
Covering Soft has made some customizations to incorporate Carpet
King's sales order form and installation schedulers so all forms
are available at one place when installation manager dispatches
a job from FloorLink.net. Floor Covering Soft also helps to
setup vendor B2B accounts for Carpet King with Mohawk, Shaw and
Beaulieu.
Two training sessions were conducted at both locations and
handouts were distributed on how to use the system on a daily
bases. As all sales representatives has been using FloorEstimate
Pro estimating software from Floor Covering Soft. The adoption
has been very smooth. The deployment took about two weeks. The
automated tasks are:
- Call-in or walk-in leads are entered into FloorLink.net
as new sales leads by sales reps who greet them, a follow-up
is scheduled.
- Sales reps log all the communications: material
selection, sample loaned, pricing, etc. under the lead.
- Sales reps can search and check product spec and pricing
from daily updated vendor B2B catalogs (Mohawk, Shaw,
Beaulieu).
- When sold, reps convert the leads to account and
schedule future services calls.
- Sales reps create sales order (can be saved as PDF and
emailed to customers) and schedule the installation by
picking up an available slot at calendar scheduler.
- Sales reps can upload estimates/diagrams from
FloorEstimate Pro software or create it with the web version
of the software, and attach it with the sales order.
- Sales manager can verify & modify the diagram and
estimate to make sure it is accurate from FloorLink.net
- Installation manager reviews all the installation
requests, assigns crews and prints out relevant paper works;
updates installation status the next day, and run a
completion report for account billing.
- Store management can run various reports on lead
generation by sources, rep conversion rate, sales in the
pipeline, sales opportunities, reports from FloorLink.net.
The Result
FloorLink.net has become Carpet King's daily operation of sales
activities.
- Sales reps are relieved of 50% administrative paper
works and phone/fax time so they can spend 50% more time on
customers.
- Sales conversion increases by 18% due to convenience
access schedules, diagrams, accurate B2B pricing, customer
information over the web.
- Installation related errors have been reduced by 81%.
- Company-wide FloorLink.net serves the full-time job of
an assistant manager for Carpet King.
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