October 2020

the sales point as well. We do try to bring everything over to the support team as a first point of call however.” TechMan has its own CRM system, which has meeting facilities in it. Through it, Leo invited customers to the meeting facility, and he then walked them through the system while he was on the phone with them. “He shows the potential customer exactly what TechMan is about,” added Peter, “and uses our live system at In Town Automotive to demonstrate it to customers. This is because there is no better demonstration than the real thing.” Training That’s not everything that TechMan does in a day, but it was all we saw. Explaining some of the wider training activities, Peter said: “We have our trainer as well, Andy. He goes out on site with customers and he spends a full day training customers. “ When our visit took place, lockdown was finally easing and Andy was shifting away from a purely online offering to a more traditional mix of remote and live training: “We did have a lot of virtual training going on, but we have just started up going to customers now, making sure that all the social distancing and hygiene is kept to the highest standard. We are slowly reintroducing on-site training again.” And so that was that. Aftermarket had an enjoyable and educational virtual visit, and we look forward to seeing TechMan in the real world to find out more in future. www.aftermarketonline.net OCTOBER 2020 AFTERMARKET 47 www.aftermarketonline.net like that, which we are more than happy to help our customers with.” Once somebody is set up, there is a gradual drop in the number of times in a day that a customer will call to the point where everything is just ticking along nicely: “As it goes on, the calls become less frequent as they start to understand and get to grips with the system a lot more. We’ve still got constant contact with that customer though. We will regularly speak to them, even if it is just a call from them to add VRM look-up credits to the system and things like that. There is always that ongoing contact.” Development At this point, we moved over to the development side. Peter laid out the routine on this side for us: “We have lots of development projects ongoing, so, they will have their heads mainly stuck in that. They will also jump onto queries and questions the customers have got, or changes that the customers need to have done. These would be things like simple, straightforward document changes, or things like that that customers require. “If there are any issues or errors, they will jump straight onto that, and fix those. Having onsite Developers is massive for us, because it gives us that reaction speed.” During our visit, we only sat in on the more routine activities (it’s called ‘Day in the Life’, not ‘Life in a Day’), but much of the Developers time is spent working up new features to add to the TechMan system. Recent additions include the Digital Kanban board, which was developed in collaboration with The Garage Inspector Andy Savva. “The majority of their focus will be on new development features,” said Peter, “making new features, updating existing features. A lot of their day is spent coding for that.” Once the routine activities were out of the way, the team could get back to doing their coding. “They will be telling me how they have done something,” observed Peter “ and I won’t know how they really did it.” Clearly, a bunch of clever guys, but they aren’t the only ones. Peter explained: “The benefit for us is that we have come from the garage industry. The head of the Development team has worked for the company for over 10 years now. He understands how the sector works and has been very involved for many years. We understand what is going on, so a lot of our knowledge is passed through to the development team. This also applies to the Support team. Everybody in support, including myself, has worked through the garage in the past as well, we have all done that front-of-house job.” This is important, we posited, as it means they understand what the customer actually needs: “Absolutely,” replied Peter, “and we understand the questions they are asking us as well.” Business It’s one thing helping customers, and working up new features for them is absolutely vital, but you won’t get very far if those new customers are not coming through the door. On this basis, we shifted over to spending some time looking over the shoulder of Sales Director Leo Freebairn. “Leo is constantly driving sales,” Peter explained. “His role is to first understand the main pain points of every potential new customer, from there he can then demonstrate which features of TechMan can relieve their stresses. It’s very much a consultative sale as not one size fits all. He will visit potential customers to demo the system, he is constantly on the phone with potential customers. He also does a lot of web-demoing as well. Especially over the last few months, where we were on lockdown, we have done a lot of business through the web. “Leo will also speak to existing customers as well, so he does have a relationship with a lot of our existing customers that he will carry on past Above: TechMan’s team assisting clients