INSIGHT Getting closer to the customer
ITW Construction Products, manufacturer and distributor of the Paslode and Spit brands, has experienced a lot of changes over the past 12 months including a restructuring and refocus of the business, all with the sole purpose of improving the service to its customers.
A
t the forefront of the changes is Justin White who was appointed general manager of the Crawley based company in July 2010. “The fi rst thing I noticed when I arrived at ITW was that there seemed to be a perceived
‘gap’ between the company and the customer,” says Justin. “My immediate plan therefore was to get closer to our customers.” Getting closer to the customer involved reorganising
the company which enabled ITW to listen better to what its customers needed and ensure that it could achieve a stronger sales focus without affecting the customer service.
on going to visit sites, discussing customer needs and demonstrating the products, before channelling the end user through to the relevant distributor.” By working with the end users and establishing solutions
to their problems, ITW has been able to then work with its distributors to make sure that it is delivering what the end user needs. “The barriers that have been there in the past we are breaking
down,” explains Justin. “The reason we have been able to break them down is because our distributors are seeing the benefi ts that our end user sales team are bringing to them. Our sales team has a vast experience in the fastener industry and the amount of work they are doing to help sell for our distributors has increased signifi cantly. We are proactively targeting end users and the interaction we have with both distributors and end users is greater than it ever has been. We are actively working to increase the business of our distribution partners, pushing business to them via our end user sales team. We are therefore very focused on how we can help distributors to boost their sales.” A key part of helping distributors boost sales has been ITW making full use of its CRM system to help partner end users
“ITW’s customer service has an excellent reputation,” states
Justin. “By restructuring the company it made it easier for our sales team to combine with customer services. We talked to the customers, explained what we could offer and then asked them what parts they were interested in. From this base we have built the business back up on what the customer wants us to do, not what we want to do.” The restructuring involved the ITW sales department being
broken down into independent and national sections. These two sections were then broken down further into an end user team that pushes business through ITW’s distribution partners and a team that deals directly with its distributor accounts. The end user team was also increased to the same size as the distributor team which was a big refocus for the company. “By concentrating on independent and national end users as
two different groups it has allowed us to tailor our service to fi t the different requirements,” says Justin. “Our sales team for the national end users are focused on training, certifi cations and open days. The independent end user sales team concentrate
“We have created a business plan from the customer upwards…”
with distributors and to make sure that trends are being spotted. “We try and keep everyone in the loop as much as possible, because if everyone knows where we’re heading, and how we are trying to get there, it easier for people to understand and get on board,” states Justin. “We have created a business plan from the customer upwards, we know what growth we want and recent results show that we are on the right track.” ITW Construction Products posted double digit growth for the
fi rst six months of 2011 and Justin emphasises that the success has been throughout the company with growth shown in both ITW’s Paslode and Spit brands, with sales of Spit products in the fi rst six months of 2011 increasing by 32%. “We had a good year in 2010 which continued into 2011,” says Justin. “The growth we
78 Fastener + Fixing Magazine • Issue 71 September 2011
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