Case Study｜Asahi Golf Co.

Sales was a black box with no visibility of activities in each branch

Mr. Shiozawa: Asahi Golf Co. EAGLE VISION In addition, the company is engaged in the comprehensive support business for golf equipment as a distributor of overseas brands such as "TaylorMade" and "Callaway". With golf as our starting point, we continue to create a wide range of lifestyles with a playful spirit. ‍

We are headquartered in Kobe and conduct route sales to golf course stores and golf equipment stores from our three bases in Tokyo and Fukuoka, but until now, we had no visibility from our head office into the sales activities of our other branches.
In fact, I have not been able to logmy activities for a long time, so much so that I could be called "allergic to daily reporting". In the past, two companies had introduced daily report systems, but although everyone entered the data in the beginning, the number of people who did so gradually decreased, and since no one returned comments to the daily reports, eventually no one entered the data anymore. Our sales staff was assigned to each area by region, but since there was no frequent turnover, the system became more and more black-boxed.
Then we learned about UPWARD and compared it with other services. We decided to install it because "it has a map function and a chat function for exchanging information, which is the closest to what we are looking for.

The following two points are the challenges to be visualized by UPWARD.
(1) Whether the sales staff is visiting the clients (golf stores / golf courses) properly
(2) Whether the sales staff is making proposals and introducing new functions and new products  

However, we had always had a strong resistance to this type of IT, partly because we had failed to establish a system in the past, so we began by utilizing the Chatter (bulletin board) function with the policy of "Let's focus on getting people to input first.

The daily report has evolved into a "two-way" communication with frequent reactions to activity reports.

Here is the actual Chatter screen. In the area circled in red, a senior supervisor comments on a daily report written by a newcomer.

While visiting a golf store that another senior employee was in charge of, he became friends with the employee in charge and sales were growing, so he suggested that he would like to be in charge from the next term, to which the senior employee immediately responded by telling him, "Don't worry, I was planning on replacing you right away.
The previous daily report was a one-way communication, with the employee reporting only to the company, but the use of the Chatter function has created this kind of two-way communication. Until now, there was no way to say, "Please let me take charge of this project tomorrow," from the bottom up, and the daily reports of the past did not last long because the data could not be consolidated. Now, the topics that come up on Chatter trigger conversations when we meet in person, and communication has become more active.

Another reason for the growth of Chatter posting is voice input. Since most of our business is done by car, it is easy for us to type in the car after we have finished our business, and gradually more and more people are posting by voice input. When I see Japanese words being converted in an interesting way sometimes, my Kansai blood gets up and I think, "I want to give something interesting back! (laugh). (Laughs.) In such cases, Chatter allows me to easily make a comment.
In the beginning, I thought I would make a success story with the sales person who had been doing the input from the old system as the promoter. We started with about three people who kept responding to activity reports anyway, ranging from serious to joking. This motivated the young salespeople to think that they were being watched, and the use of the system expanded from the point that they could get feedback on their own sales activities.
We had UPWARD's customer success staff provide manager training, which was also very effective. The most effective effect was probably for young salespeople, who were told, "This is a place where my direct supervisor is looking over my shoulder, so I should write it down properly. I am thankful that the customer success staff in charge gave us advice on such trivial matters.

'First you go round from the big white circle, and if there's red on the way, you turn it blue.' It's like a game, you paint the map in different colours.

Route sales are actually conducted while looking at the UPWARD map. The color and size of the pins are set according to the frequency of activities and total sales. The sales representative first patrols for "large white circles" in his/her area that have large transaction amounts but have not been visited in over a year.

Looking at a map of the Tokyo branch as of the end of February last year, there were a great many golf courses that had not been visited, so the sales manager examined the map and decided to start by attacking Chiba, which has the most golf courses in Japan. Until now, it had been difficult to judge whether or not they had actually visited the golf courses even if we instructed them to go, but the status of their activities became clear at a glance, and the number of visits increased in a truly tangible way. In the same vein, we also strengthened our efforts in neighboring areas such as Saitama and Shizuoka, where it was easier to spread the good examples horizontally.
We told the staff, "First of all, let's go to all these big white circles," and "If there is a big red flame on the way there, you have to turn it blue.

I wouldn't be picky if I said, "If the big white circle isn't going and sales are still up, then they will be even higher if we go." Golf courses are very old-fashioned and courteous, and if there are sales people who come to you, they will give you a "souvenir" order.
Then there are the samples that are old, or the latest models are not lined up. If we make sales floor proposals based on information on actual sales trends that the stores are not yet aware of, we can increase the number of buyers wonderfully, so we should still visit places we have not been for a long time. We call it "a gold mine" (laughs).

‍Build good relationships with customers and share know-how internally to create a sophisticated sales floor

Here is an image of the "Display Contest," an initiative that began after UPWARD was introduced.

We ask golf courses and golf stores to jack up their sales areas for a certain period of time to show off their products, and then have them take pictures of their sales areas and compete for the most votes from all employees. When a good sales space is created, it is actively posted on Chatter, and these good sales spaces receive many comments of praise. Other salespeople see this and learn from it, wondering how to showcase their products in such a way, and this is definitely a motivating factor.
In the first place, we are only able to rent space in a store and create such a sales floor if we have a good relationship with the store, so this is one of the results of conducting our daily sales activities properly. Although it has only been two years since we started, it is clear that the overall level of our business has improved since the first year. I feel once again that it is really good that we are able to share this kind of information.

We want all employees to understand the validity of the data and to bring out 100 percent of UPWARD's power.

Two years after introducing UPWARD, we have finally been able to accumulate data, and I feel that we are now able to utilize the data in the way we had hoped.
Unfortunately, however, not all of us have mastered the use of UPWARD yet. If all employees realize the effectiveness of this data and make more use of it, I think the power of UPWARD will be more fully demonstrated.
I believe that the next stage is to make more effective use of this data, create a sales "model" for Asahi Golf, and make it take root.