Systematization of inquiry handling through the sales reform of Corona Damages! ｜BX Tenpal Co.,Ltd.

Mr. Tadaira, Manager, Planning and Public Relations Section, Sales Planning Department (in charge of website and content direction)
Ms. Kanayama (Marketing), Planning & PR Section, Sales Planning Department
Mr. Kanai, Sales Promotion Section, Sales Planning Department (in charge of inside sales and marketing) 

BX Tenpal Co., Ltd.

Please give us an overview of your company's business and the areas you are responsible for

Mr. Kanai: BX Tempal Corporation manufactures, sells, and installs awnings, which are sunshades and rainshades made of tent fabric, for open cafes and other restaurants, commercial facilities, residences, and factories. We boast the largest share of the domestic market for awnings, our main product, and we also propose and manufacture other structures using curtains and sheets for indoor and outdoor installation.

Our products are ultimately used in restaurants and other places, but it is the design offices, design companies, and clients who decide to use our building materials. Since the decision to use our products is made at the stage of determining architectural specifications, our new sales activities are targeted at the decision-making layer, and the same applies to our activities at BowNow.

Our company was reorganized in April this year, and I belong to the department that develops new customers and sales, and I have been involved in the commercialization of marketing and organizational development. Most recently, I have been in charge of inside sales.

Mr. Tahira: I work in the Planning and Public Relations Section, where I edit websites using the CMS "Blue Monkey" and set up BowNow, while also creating other design and promotional materials.

Ms. Kanayama: I am in the Planning and Public Relations Section of the Sales Planning Department, which is responsible for designing and creating promotional tools. Currently, I'm in charge of BowNow and lead management for customers who have made inquiries or requested information.

【Background of the introduction】We started using the demo version when we renewed our website.

【How did you get started】Accelerated marketing in the wake of COVID-19

What made you start using BowNow in earnest?

Ms. Kanayama: Actually, we had been using BowNow for about three years, but it was only recently that we started to use web marketing as a full-scale measure. Before that, we used to receive about 40 inquiries a month from our website, but we would just pass them on to our sales team, and there were many cases where the sales team could not keep up with the inquiries, or even if they did, we did not know what happened to them afterwards.

Even so, in the past, our priority was to deal with the customer in front of us, and we didn't see it as an issue within the company that dealing with inquiries had become secondary.

Mr. Kanai: That changed drastically when the new coronavirus caused people to refrain from going out. Our company was reorganized in April and we were just about to focus on new business development, but even if we wanted to do door-to-door sales as before, we could not meet our customers. We could not meet our customers even if we tried to do door-to-door sales as we had done in the past. We had to avoid visiting our existing customers in rural areas from Tokyo. The exhibitions we had been participating in were cancelled, and with no clear future in sight, we thought about what we could do and thought, "Oh, by the way, there is BowNow".

We had been using BowNow to accumulate website logs and send out e-mails, but we decided to use it for activities that would lead to better results, such as acquiring customers and receiving orders.

【Measures and Usage】Business cards lying dormant in the company have been imported into BowNow.

What were the first steps you took with BowNow?

Mr. Kanai: We thought that it would be difficult for our customer development activities to be effective without a certain number of leads, so we converted all the business cards in the company into data and imported them into BowNow. We also introduced a business card management tool to convert business cards into data.

We also created a system to properly respond to inquiries and requests for information from the website. CVs (conversions) on the website are divided into three categories: estimates, requests for information, and inquiries, and the leads that pass through each form are managed in BowNow according to their customer status.

In order to solve the problem of sales not being able to take action even if the inquiry lead is passed on as is, I play the role of inside sales. I conduct interviews with customers to clarify their needs before passing them on to sales, and keep long-term projects, which tend to be put off when chasing single-month targets, in the inside sales stage to select and nurture customers.

Mr. Kanayama: We have also started to create white papers and have people download them via a form. Originally, we had been sending out e-mail newsletters, but we realized that people would not read them if we just introduced our products, so we decided that we needed some kind of content. In the future, we would like to create content for customers' "frequently asked questions," which used to be handled by the sales and development departments, and improve it through trial and error.

【Future Outlook】A website that can generate sales for one good salesperson.

How would you like to evolve BowNow and your marketing activities in the future?

Mr. Kanai: This is something I've been talking about with the support staff at Mtame, but our goal is to nurture the leads we get from the website and link them to orders, so that in the future we can generate sales equivalent to that of a good salesperson. To achieve this goal, we need to increase our results by about six times from the current level. Since the number of people we can spend on marketing is limited, I think our future challenge will be to see how much we can increase our results with less man-hours.

【Customer's Voice】Finally, do you have any message for customers who are considering MA tools in the future, or what do you expect from BowNow and Mtame in the future?

Do you have any expectations for BowNow and Mtame Corporation in the future?

Finally, do you have any message for customers who are considering MA tools in the future, or what do you expect from BowNow and Mtame in the future?
Mr. Tahira: I have been using BowNow and BlueMonkey together to create and manage my member's page, but there were times when I didn't know how to set it up. I think it would be better if you could provide more materials and videos to help us solve the problems in an easy-to-understand manner, taking into account examples from other companies.

Ms. Kanayama: The advantage of BowNow is that it is easy to use and simple to operate, but as we use it, we sometimes find ourselves wishing that we could do more... I hope that BowNow will be updated with more convenient functions while maintaining its simplicity. 

Mr. Kanai: Digital marketing, including MA, does not end once the tool is installed, and it will not lead to results unless you think about how to utilize it. If you are planning to introduce MA tools in the future, I think you will be able to get better results if you think about how to use the tools after introducing them, and I think Mtame is a company that can support you in this area.