Case Study｜Nissen Sangyo Co.

We want to use the daily report to provide us with data that can be utilized, rather than just knowing if we are not slacking off.

Nissen Sangyo handles a wide range of livestock feeds, with a focus on the purchase and sale of Hokkaido grass. Nissen Sangyo also aims to meet the diverse needs of Hokkaido agriculture and contribute to its development by diverting rice straw and rice husks, which are difficult to dispose of in the region, for use as bedding straw for livestock, and by starting up services such as dairy farm helpers, which are in short supply in the region. Our goal is to respond to the needs of Hokkaido agriculture and contribute to its development.

This grass distribution business was something I started as a sole proprietor. I used my van as an office, opened my computer from the field, sent faxes to confirm orders using a tool called "InterFax," and did all the paperwork by e-mail... In any case, I was conscious of efficiency in order to differentiate my business from my competitors. I was conscious of efficiency.

When our business grew in size and we hired salespeople, the first thing we asked them to do was to write a daily report by hand; we asked them to fill in a whole list of what activities they had done for the day and leave it on their desks for us to go over. With this operation, as the number of employees increased, it became impossible to see through them, and even if you read the contents, you could only see if they were slacking off or not. It was not something that could be utilized at all.
Realizing that this situation was not good, in 2011 we introduced e-Sales Manager by Softbrain Corporation, an SFA. Smartphones were not yet widely used at that time, so we had our employees input data into the system after they returned to the office. Although handwritten daily reports were eliminated and information could be tied to customers, the input load now became an issue.
Sales staff would visit many dairy farms before returning to the office, so by the time they returned, they would have forgotten the information about the morning's customers, and since they could only input the information at the office, the amount of information they had to input doubled when they returned from their business trip.
In addition, the workload on the field causes some people to enter information and others not to. I felt that this was a major disadvantage, because if some people did not input information, the information could not be shared, and therefore, sales advice could not be given.
Around that time, I learned about Salesforce, a cloud service, and wondered if it would be possible to improve efficiency a little more by combining it with smartphones, which were just becoming popular. We decided to replace it with Salesforce.

How to increase efficiency in Hokkaido, where travel time is not to be underestimated.

After implementing Salesforce, the staff can now share information with each other smoothly, and information can be accumulated for each customer and each business meeting. We were able to utilize the data and felt that it was a totally different system.
However, introducing and establishing a new system is not easy. It takes time, and there are differences in employee literacy and motivation.
Also, when we look at the results of our activities, we realize that "if you just plan in your head, you only go where it is easy to go. When a customer makes an inquiry or places an order, you end up saying, "I'll visit from now on today," where it could be tomorrow or the day after tomorrow. I was not able to consider the efficiency of travel, look at the schedules of other customers to follow up on, and so on.
Naturally, this was due to our awareness that we had to sell, but we felt that we were wasting time in terms of travel efficiency. Hokkaido is vast, so travel time cannot be underestimated. If we did not plan efficiently, a month would pass completely differently for each member, and there would be a considerable difference in the amount of activity and number of business meetings.  

Therefore, in 2016, we introduced UPWARD, which can be linked to Salesforce and allows activity planning from a map. We now make several maps that visualize the customer's situation, such as "There is a need for grass" or "There is a need for bedding straw," and tentatively schedule our sales activities from our smartphones before going into business. This has made a big difference in terms of activity planning and travel efficiency.

You will be asked to report your activity volume during the sales meeting, and the more efficient you are in the number of visits you make, the more you will make. To increase activity, you have to move efficiently. This has increased by an average of 45% since the introduction of UPWARD, and we believe that the use of maps has been a perfect fit.

Also, the accuracy of the data in Salesforce has increased considerably because the results of the visit are voice-entered on the spot while the customer is out of the office. When I look at past transaction history, even if the customer was not originally my client, the data is still there, so I can have a conversation like, "We talked about this a few months ago, how are things going since then? I can have a conversation with the customer and say, "I heard about this a few months ago. Customers are pleased to hear that I have an excellent memory, and this often leads to business negotiations, which I feel is very effective.

In fact, the reason UPWARD has become so well established is largely due to my own experience of handling UPWARD as a player. When we first introduced UPWARD, we had built the system from a management perspective, or rather, from the perspective of an administrator from the office.
However, one day I was assigned to develop a new business in a certain area, and by handling UPWARD as a player, I found myself thinking, "It would be easier to use this way," or "This item was unnecessary," and I kept brushing it up. Then, the members of the team would see things from the same point of view, and they would say, "I can understand this! We were able to instantly promote the penetration and establishment of the system.
It was also important that UPWARD's customer success staff held seminars on how to use the system. Now it is something that we can use on a daily basis, and I feel that we have mastered its use.  

Instead of relying on people, the sales "mold" will increase sales.

The current sales "model" using UPWARD is an important indicator for us in differentiating ourselves from our competitors.
In fact, when we were promoting the introduction of UPWARD, there was some opposition from veteran employees. The more talented employees who had already achieved good sales results would naturally say, "Why do I have to go to the trouble of inputting activity reports into the system?
However, the important thing is to continue to thoroughly send out the message as a company that "do it with SFA." Two or three years later, those who were not yet accustomed to SFA at the time have succeeded in increasing sales even more than they did then.
In the end, I think it is meaningless to increase sales based on the intuition and intuition of a talented person if that person disappears and cannot be followed up.... As for the company, I feel that it has been very good for us because our asset, "customer information," is now properly retained in the company.  

To get better at selling, lots of practice is needed. To increase your batting average, first you need to hit more. Salespeople who have a lot of hits are practicing that much more, so their batting average will surely increase. Rather than struggling to hire the very best people, I think we can develop salespeople with high batting averages if we use that "model. We are now getting a grasp of the fact that the number of salespeople in the large area of Hokkaido can be increased, and that the "pattern" will increase sales, rather than relying on people.
I would like to continue to promote our business in the large area of Hokkaido, and I would like to work with Hokkaido agriculture by increasing the number of salespeople who "do what they have to do" using the sales "model" based on UPWARD.