Trades Exhibitions has teamed up with organisations across the beauty industry in an effort to inform, educate and promote the professional beauty industry. They are the organisers of the Professional Beauty shows – the top health and beauty events in the UK, Ireland, India and South Africa. They publish the UK’s leading magazine (Professional Beauty Magazine) for professional beauty, nails and spa industries. They also organise the prestigious European Spa Convention and Professional Beauty Awards.
Selecting CRM
With all of these products and services, Managing Director Mark Moloney is a man with a vision. To realise his vision, he identified the need for a CRM system in 2013. The system needed to reduce the administration overhead associated with managing stand bookings and re-bookings. He also wanted to ensure that exhibitors and advertisers were aware of all the different opportunities to engage with the professional beauty industry.
Trades Exhibitions was rapidly growing. Their exhibitions were attracting ever more stands and they were launching more exhibitions across the world. The sales team were building excellent links to the professional beauty industry, but struggling with the growing administration overhead. It was becoming apparent that investment was required to ensure that a simple mistake didn’t upset a major customer.
A further challenge resulting from the rapid growth in exhibitors and events was a growing credit control requirement. As the payment profile for exhibition stands includes multiple payments, each booking could result in three invoices. Ensuring that even very large customers paid on time was taking an increasing amount of time. Often, this was time that should have been spent upselling and cross-selling.
Collier Pickard understood our business and our systems to the point where they took responsibility for the integration of the sales team and their data. We don’t have IT staff and rely on Collier Pickard to ensure our CRM system continues to deliver. – Mark Maloney, Managing Director
Implementation
Collier Pickard, the UK’s leading independent CRM consultancy, showed Trades Exhibitions how Maximizer CRM could address these issues. In the first instance, it would help boost their re-bookings with the use of real-time sales dashboards. The dashboards would measure sales activity and results, and highlight any clients that had not been contacted in the last 90 days. This improved engagement with the client and made sure opportunities were not missed.
The system also collated all of their data into one, easy-to-access place. Once the Opportunities were closed and turned into bookings, they could be tracked through the payment process using Opportunity stages.
Collier Pickard provided in-depth product demonstrations, helping Trades Exhibitions at every stage of their decision process. The team worked with Trades Exhibitions to ensure the installation and support services got them up and running quickly. From the non-biased consultancy sessions to finding the ideal solution, its implementation and importing of data and staff training, Collier Pickard assumed the role of mentor and guide. Once the system was live, they provided ad hoc administrator services that kept the system working.
One of the key factors in our growth has been a CRM system that reduces the administration burden for our sales people. The system ensures that we spend more time working to help our clients achieve their goals and less time on non-productive administration and reporting. – Mark Maloney, Managing Director
Conclusion
The system has grown with the business and now manages even more exhibitions, stands and advertising sales. The managers of the business have real-time dashboards that are used to steer the business in the right direction. They have immediate visibility on which spaces have sold and which are still available. Once a new booking has been placed on the system, the sales team can easily manage what is required on each stand. This includes any additional sales associated with the booking: for example, any extra banners, standees or promotional materials for the exhibitors.
They are also able to analyse lost sales, helping them to understand why they were lost and make adjustments to what they offer at shows to boost future sales. Steve James, Sales Director, explains the benefits in more detail: “Keeping the sales team focussed on selling is the key to our success. The more people they engage with, the more opportunities they have to sell. Maximizer finds who to call, when to call and what to call them about. I can see instantly who is working their patch, and who needs help.”
As well as becoming more efficient, Trades Exhibitions have also reported a substantial improvement in cash flow because staged invoice payments are now automatically issued, ensuring that exhibitors are always invoiced on time. They are now able to control ‘phased payments’ more easily, where the exhibitor pays 30% of their fee upfront and pays the remaining balance over an agreed time period. The system ensures that all billing is done at the correct time and produces pro forma invoices as requested.
Finally, the system was flexible enough to manage the acquisition of HJi (Hairdressers Journal International). Over a few days, 8 years’ worth of historical sales data was imported. The HJi sales team were re-trained and set to work using Maximizer to secure re-bookings at their major exhibition.
