Serving customers across the United States

Identifying prospects and reaching out to them at the right time, with the right product, and through the right channels can be extremely challenging for regional businesses. A Texas-based chemical, solvent, and lubricant distributor relied heavily on traditional sales representatives to find and approach new customers. This created a slew of challenges.

Business performance was negatively affected by the sales representatives’ difficulty in attracting new prospects, limiting the company’s reach outside their region. When new customers were found, extensive credit approvals could stretch out the sales process and increase the time it took for services to be rendered. Consequently, the customer chose to join BluePallet as a seller.

With its roots set firmly in the state of Texas, our client is a chemical, lubricant, and solvent vendor. In its 100-year history, the company has grown from a relatively small family business to a large, national supplier with state-of-the-art facilities and an expansive network of customers spread across state lines.

While the client wished to serve a nationwide audience, its marketing and logistics were limiting its ability to scale at the necessary speed. As a result, only customers in Texas and the surrounding states were able to access our client’s services.

Each customer across the country is unique and requires a different approach during outreach. This created a significant need for market research before products could be sold to customers in other states. It was also difficult for the client to build systems that could serve customers country-wide while giving business leaders a unified view of key sales metrics.

Like most other chemical businesses, our client regularly worked with customers on credit. With large payments, regular shipments, and valuable inventories, the client required assurance that they would be paid once the product delivery was complete. However, the credit approval process that would provide this assurance could be long and tedious, particularly for new customers. This significantly slowed business growth and impeded access and onboarding for new customers. Despite their tedious nature, credit approvals are a critical tool for fast growing businesses and the client needed to simplify and quicken these processes.

Over the course of its history, the client has been able to expand its product offerings to serve a more varied client base, but this created logistical challenges. Inventory levels were only updated periodically. The lack of real-time sales and inventory data created a time lag before marketing and sales teams could adjust their outreach strategies to push undersold items or to stop offering items that were sold out. This led to orders going unfulfilled and customer satisfaction rates being negatively affected. Additionally, customers from different industries had different product needs but were shown the same product offerings. This prevented sales teams from effectively employing customer segmentation during the early stages of customer interaction.

Prior to the adoption of BluePallet’s solution, product offerings were typically limited to customers that ran operations in and around Texas. The client needed to find a way to put their products in front of a national audience. It was not enough to simply scale the relevant landing pages and shore up sales teams. It was also necessary to show region-specific pricing and product offerings to ensure high levels of conversions from the outreach stage. BluePallet’s solution allowed the client to prioritize different products in different markets depending on the needs of that region’s customers. This highly adaptable storefront also allowed the client to price their products depending on their location and price sensitivity. This combination of factors allowed the client to receive and fulfill several orders from regions outside of Texas, giving them a more varied and expansive client portfolio.

To sell to a varied customer base, the client must evaluate a customer’s ability to pay for their purchases and protect themselves against potential financial loss in the event of default. BluePallet helped to reduce the administrative burden caused by excessive and tedious credit approvals by simplifying the entire process for customers. This allows the client to pursue deals with businesses that might have moderate or high risk profiles without worrying about potential defaults. BluePallet also provides customers with widespread accounts receivable insurance coverage to ensure they are covered even in the most extreme payment default issues.

Supply and demand often fluctuate and it is critical for customer satisfaction and business continuity that logistics teams can fulfill all orders once they are completed. However, information silos, time lags, and disjointed sales and logistics processes can prevent businesses from completing their orders on time even if a purchase has been made. BluePallet enabled the client to integrate an inventory management and distribution system directly with their sales platform. This ensures that customers are only shown products that are in stock and are only provided with realistic delivery timelines.