10 Minutes with TIMco’s Sales Director, Simon Rance
Sales lie at the heart of just about every business, but at TIMco they believe it’s the service and support that is offered to clients that has been the core reasons that boosts customer retention levels, repeat purchases and the all-important, long-term customer engagement.
We caught up with Simon Rance, TIMco’s Sales Director, to find out how focussing on working with your customers is as important as the service you provide.
Hello Simon! To start us off, what do you think TIMco’s customers want most from the business?
“First and foremost, it’s imperative that we listen to our customers to gain a concise insight to the direction of their business and the market they reside within, which enables us to tailor solutions that meet the needs of their business direction and model.
Service is at the heart of TIMco and providing a prompt and efficient delivery is massively important. We appreciate that our distributors are under immense pressure to provide their end users with an ever-increasing range of products, which in turn creates its own pressures upon their logistic capabilities. Consequently, TIMco has positioned itself to provide these valued customers with high volumes of stock availability combined with a 5pm cut off for next day delivery and minimal carriage paid values.
How is TIMco different from other distributors?
“It’s how you help your customer to sell more product that’s important in today’s market, and at TIMco it is our responsibility to provide the tools to do just that. Informative packaging and merchandising that provides vital information in helping the end user with their store navigation and product selection is just one of the ways that has helped us increase sales for those customers with a retail presence.
Our sales team has evolved over the years, and they are now considered “Regional Business Consultants”. This new title is down to the fact that they no longer just sell screws and fixings but are tasked with working closely with their accounts to advise and implement strategic business plans which are specifically designed to provide measurable growth.
The regional consultants are backed up by a head office team including both Internal Sales and Marketing functions dedicated to each client – meaning that we are able to develop constructive relationships with each and every customer. Many of our merchants now refer to the broad range of industry-leading services and support offered by TIMco as ‘The TIMco Hug’.
Do you offer any special training to your customers?
“Delivering valuable training to our customers is paramount in equipping them with the right tools and knowledge to present themselves as a professional distributor. Furthermore, empowering our customer to deliver this training to the end user is as equally important.
Whilst we pride ourselves on training all TIMco members of staff with in depth training, we also have many ways of communicating this with our customers. A great example of this is our training centre based in Nantwich, which provides hands on training programmes plus enabling TIMco to test new and exciting innovations. However, we appreciate that it is not always possible for our customers to visit our site, so we can also provide training via our nationwide Sales Support Team at our customers’ premises.
Further training and support is also available via our website, which hold all aspects of technical data and our range of “How To...” videos, which are available to view via YouTube and Facebook.
So what’s next for TIMco?
“Continuing to listen and understand the needs of our customers is a priority and will be so ongoing. Without their input, we are simply guessing, therefore customer feedback is imperative to our ongoing success.
Strong and engaging client relationships are integral to TIMco’s ongoing success. With significant sales growth over the last five consecutive years, the company is keen to maintain this momentum by building well established and mutually beneficial relationships with customers so that they feel confident and valued as a TIMco partner in the long term.
With several new projects due to be launched over the coming months, we will endeavour to remain one-step ahead of our competitors and consistently deliver more exciting new products and ranges in the future – watch this space!
Finally, and most importantly, whilst we’ve been very fortunate to experience such amazing growth for a number of years, we will retain our core values as a family run business.”
If you have any questions about TIMco, then drop us a tweet or send us a message on LinkedIn or Facebook.