
THE Challenge
Like many food service equipment distributors, the sales team at Johnson found themselves spending much of their sales time sifting through paper catalogs.
“We had probably a 20-foot wall of catalogs,” said John Gleason, certified food service professional and sales rep at Johnson. “When it was time to quote a product for a customer, I had to spend so much time paging my way through the catalogs just to find out who is the rep for that company, how to get a quote from them, and then getting that quote over to the customer. It was a very
slow process.”
Gleason also points out that the team did not have an efficient way to compare manufacturers or models of equipment for their customers.
“It would take an 8-foot table to compare everyone’s specs on a door or cooler,” said Gleason. “And, that’s assuming the catalogs we were using had the most up-to-date information.”
The sales team knew that getting accurate quotes in the hands of customers quickly would help close sales faster – and free up their time to do more selling