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Act! helps shape new product development for molding firm

This New Jersey-based firm has become a market leader in its field thanks to a combination of product innovation and high-quality customer service, both of which it continues to achieve thanks to Act!.

roby-grenier

Roby Grenier

Territory Manager: East

LMT Merrcer Group, Inc.

Since 1987, LMT Mercer Group has been making high-quality vinyl fencing, decking and railing components for the construction, housebuilding and landscaping sectors.

It’s now the largest injection molding manufacturer of its kind in either the US or Canada, with a diverse range of customers who are all looking for the best possible products and service.

“So giving them individual attention and care is really important,” says the company’s sales manager, Roby Grenier. “Act! allows us do that because it captures information our ERP system doesn’t, which means we can stay a little bit closer to our customers.”

The company’s Act! database holds details of all the transactions the sales team has done with an evergrowing list of over 1,500 wholesalers and distributors.

So, when Roby has an appointment with a customer, he can tailor the conversation so it’s focused on products that are the most relevant.

All these customer suggestions and ideas are recorded in Act!, so it’s an invaluable source of information that our product development team can turn to when it comes to improving an existing product or developing entirely new ones to fill a gap in the market.

Act! helps in a dynamic marketplace

“I always look in my Act! history before any appointment with a customer, so I know what I need to prepare beforehand to shape the conversation around products that are most relevant to them. If I didn’t have that sort of information at my fingertips in Act!,” says Roby, “I’d be going in blind.”

Act! also enables Roby to pick up past relationships with old customers when they reappear. “Because our marketplace is very dynamic,” says Roby, “we often find that customers who haven’t bought from us for a while suddenly come back, which is why we only ever mark them as ‘inactive’ and never erase their details from Act!, just in case.”

As many customers expect and presume you will have information about all their previous interactions with you, always being able to recall it even after a long time demonstrates that you value that customer, which is always a good start-point to any conversation.

Support for new product development

As well as recording all the ‘day-to-day’ transactions with customers, Act! is also exceptionally useful when it comes to product development. One of the reasons the LMT Mercer Group remains a market leader is because it is continually innovating – every year it brings in at least 20 new products, often based on input received from customers.

“Our market’s pretty vocal when it comes to telling us what it wants from products,” says Roby, “so customers will feed back if they’ve bought a product from a competitor that they think could be better. Or they might even come to us looking for something that doesn’t exist yet.”

And since all these customer suggestions and ideas are recorded in Act!, it’s become an invaluable source of information for the product development team to tap into when it comes to improving an existing product or developing entirely new ones to fill a gap in the market.

Roby is always developing Act! by making minor adjustments to the system as needed, though for major updates he turns to Debora Boyle, an Act! Certified Consultant with Action Platinum Solutions, who’s provided great help and assistance ever since Roby joined the company ten years ago.

Given that Roby foresees strong market opportunities in the future, he will no doubt be calling on Debora to help him capitalise on more of the potential of Act! in the future.

LMT-Mercer

We often find that customers who haven’t bought from us for a while suddenly come back, which is why we only ever mark them as ‘inactive’ and never erase their details from Act!.

Key Takeaways

  • Act! contains a highly detailed and targeted database of 1,500 wholesalers and distributors in the construction, housebuilding and landscaping sectors.
  • By capturing information that is missed by the ERP system used by the customer service team, Act! helps bring the company closer to its customers.
  • Because it provides a central source of customer feedback and ideas, Act! is an invaluable tool for the company’s product development team who are always looking to add new or improved items to the company’s portfolio. This is all part of the customer-focused partnership the company aims to create.
  • The company has nearly 1,000 items in its current product range of high-quality vinyl fencing, decking and railing components and adds at least 20 more to this every year.
  • The LMT Mercer Group operates in a highly dynamic marketplace where longdormant customers can suddenly return. Roby and his team are able to re-establish relationships with them because they make ‘old’ accounts inactive rather than erase them.
Key Takeaways

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About Act!

More than CRM. Your total relationship solution. Act! unites sales, marketing, and customer management in one intuitive platform to help you stay organised, attract new customers, and turn relationships into results.

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