We always meet wonderful and interesting people at our trade shows and on the phone. Getting to know our distributors and developing personal relationships is paramount in our business practice.
Doug LaViolette and his family, I am proud to spotlight in this posting. I first met Doug over a year ago. We spoke on the phone at great length, as we discovered similarities in our business practices, community activities, dedication to our families and desire to succeed in business through building relationships and friendships. Doug is principal of the LaViolette Group based in Wisconsin. He is a military veteran, is extremely kind, has great business sense and relationships, and operates an inspiring non-profit organization called The Brian LaViolette Scholarship Foundation.
I truly cannot say enough about Doug. He has emotionally touched myself, my family and our company. His sincerity, thoughtfulness, industriousness packaged under a pleasant soft-spoken demeanor had made him instantly likable.
I could carry on all day about the projects and ideas and unique relationships Doug has in the business world, where this special individual shines is through his charitable work. Doug, through a family adversity, channeled his energy and resources to create a foundation named in honor of his son Brian. To quote the Foundation's website (http://www.briansjourney.com) : "Since 1992, the Brian LaViolette Scholarship Foundation has presented more than 450 scholarships to deserving college-bound students in Northeastern Wisconsin, the United States, and other parts of the world". The Scholarship of Honor is presented to deserving high school seniors in pursuit of a career in the military, community or public service.
If the Brian LaViolette Scholarship Foundation stopped operating today simply based on the laurels of presenting education scholarships thus far - it would be incredible, this Foundation does much more and is only growing in scope and attention. The Foundation honors fallen military veterans through presenting scholarships in their name, exposing their stories, inspires the community and demonstrates the resilience and good we as people are capable of.
Doug's family, their dedication and their story is what truly defines this foundation. The LaViolette family operates the Brian LaViolette Scholarship Foundation. His wife Renee and daughter Kim manage the Foundation. To truly understand this Foundation and this remarkable family, I direct you to read Brian's Story on the Brian LaViolette Scholarship Foundation's website. Doug once told me how his son Brian continues to impact and influence his life; the journey his life has taken and the people he has assisted and the people he has met along the way
are certainly the reward.
I hope this may in some way honor Doug and his family the way they honor and recognize so many others.
If you would like more information on this Foundation or Doug, please click on the link Brian LaViolette Scholarship Foundation.
"The Journey is the Reward" - Brian LaViolette
Saturday, July 24, 2010
Monday, February 8, 2010
My dashboard brings all the sales to the yard, thats right it's better than yours
We have been using a web based leads management program simply called "dashboard." It is by LeadLog. Over the course of the past several months, it has been fully integrated with our sales and customer service. Thankfully, we offer a superior product with super service (gloat) and receive many inquiries and quote requests for minimum orders to large orders. That, added to the great contacts we make at face-to-face meetings at trade shows has given us quite a bit of information to keep track of. We decided to use a, relatively speaking, new lead management program (think facebook of lead management).
I am addressing this as a post: 1) I have not posted in quite a while and felt frisky and 2) because we think its a neat program and deserves a lil' buzz. We have worked with the dashboard folks to be able to upload our leads and populate our dashboard account and also learned how to add and categorize new leads. Regardless, if you are on the sales side, supply side, distributor side or retail side - it seems to work on all levels as opposed to very expensive, bulky, older and what we think as a bit confusing CRM (customer relationship management) software. And we can access it on the road on laptops and mobile devices at anytime. We are hoping for a chat update to be able to instant message while on dashboard too.
We learned to use dashboard tags to identify accounts and then sub-tag individual lead contacts under that main account. It helps organize an account, especially if there may be more than one sales person working with different divisions in a large company. It works great so far, the only manual effort I have personally found is entering the contact information or notes, the rest is just clicks. Normally, we just keep it up all day in our web browser and enter the information as a phone call or email comes in and share it with the team. The biggest assistance is not losing leads! Admittedly, it is sometimes hard to remember or manage business cards and special requests or conversations that may have occurred weeks ago. I suppose there is an apology in there to anyone (I hope there are very few if any) that may have "slipped through the cracks," I hope this finds you well and know we are taking every effort to correct this by using new technology to manage every call, email, conversation and request!!
With due diligence and an easy customer management system at our fingertips, we have all but eliminated this. We believe we are on the same side and team with all of our terrific distributors and firmly believe in keeping our relationships open to further our mutual goal of building business with each other and assisting businesses that we cater to, grow and thrive.
I would encourage not only those on our team within our office, but those who are on our team outside of our company, our distributors, in utilizing dashboard as well, to assist in managing their own business leads. I hope that anyone who is aware of our practices in customer service, resolution and prompt service will trust in our promotion of dashboard.
The ideal program for any sales based business (which is every business, I believe, by definition) will be simple, customizable and limitless in application. I believe that any salesperson, working for themselves or for a company, will feel autonomous and entrepreneurial when able to use technology that caters to their specific needs while encompassing the basics of pre-sales lead management. On a side note, its also a great database for keeping contact names, numbers and email addresses to pull up in a flash - rather than shuffling oodles of papers with scribble to find that phone number you wrote down a few days ago. I anticipate the ongoing updates of dashboard and appreciate the quick responses from them when requiring the occasional tutoring to customize the program to our own needs. (usually it is stuff we could have worked out ourselves with a modicum of patience)
As a company, more leads do not necessarily mean better business. It does mean that each and every individual potential business partnership is valuable when given the time and attention they dually deserve. You do not want a single one to "slip through the cracks."
www.getdashboard.com
I am addressing this as a post: 1) I have not posted in quite a while and felt frisky and 2) because we think its a neat program and deserves a lil' buzz. We have worked with the dashboard folks to be able to upload our leads and populate our dashboard account and also learned how to add and categorize new leads. Regardless, if you are on the sales side, supply side, distributor side or retail side - it seems to work on all levels as opposed to very expensive, bulky, older and what we think as a bit confusing CRM (customer relationship management) software. And we can access it on the road on laptops and mobile devices at anytime. We are hoping for a chat update to be able to instant message while on dashboard too.
We learned to use dashboard tags to identify accounts and then sub-tag individual lead contacts under that main account. It helps organize an account, especially if there may be more than one sales person working with different divisions in a large company. It works great so far, the only manual effort I have personally found is entering the contact information or notes, the rest is just clicks. Normally, we just keep it up all day in our web browser and enter the information as a phone call or email comes in and share it with the team. The biggest assistance is not losing leads! Admittedly, it is sometimes hard to remember or manage business cards and special requests or conversations that may have occurred weeks ago. I suppose there is an apology in there to anyone (I hope there are very few if any) that may have "slipped through the cracks," I hope this finds you well and know we are taking every effort to correct this by using new technology to manage every call, email, conversation and request!!
With due diligence and an easy customer management system at our fingertips, we have all but eliminated this. We believe we are on the same side and team with all of our terrific distributors and firmly believe in keeping our relationships open to further our mutual goal of building business with each other and assisting businesses that we cater to, grow and thrive.
I would encourage not only those on our team within our office, but those who are on our team outside of our company, our distributors, in utilizing dashboard as well, to assist in managing their own business leads. I hope that anyone who is aware of our practices in customer service, resolution and prompt service will trust in our promotion of dashboard.
The ideal program for any sales based business (which is every business, I believe, by definition) will be simple, customizable and limitless in application. I believe that any salesperson, working for themselves or for a company, will feel autonomous and entrepreneurial when able to use technology that caters to their specific needs while encompassing the basics of pre-sales lead management. On a side note, its also a great database for keeping contact names, numbers and email addresses to pull up in a flash - rather than shuffling oodles of papers with scribble to find that phone number you wrote down a few days ago. I anticipate the ongoing updates of dashboard and appreciate the quick responses from them when requiring the occasional tutoring to customize the program to our own needs. (usually it is stuff we could have worked out ourselves with a modicum of patience)
As a company, more leads do not necessarily mean better business. It does mean that each and every individual potential business partnership is valuable when given the time and attention they dually deserve. You do not want a single one to "slip through the cracks."
www.getdashboard.com
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