Laurent-Perrier boosts champagne sales with Cegeka Fearless Leader

Business

Does the name Laurent-Perrier need an introduction? The brand has been renowned worldwide for decades, for its fresh, exquisite-quality champagnes. Behind its success lies a story of tradition, craftsmanship, and innovation that started in Tours-sur-Marne (France) in 1812. Today, Laurent-Perrier is one of the few remaining family-owned, large and independent champagne businesses – and the number 2 in the world.

The cellars and offices of Laurent-Perrier are still based in Tours-sur-Marne. In addition, the business operates 6 subsidiaries that take care of the local distribution and sales of its champagnes, including a Belgian branch.

Making sure Laurent-Perrier pops on every shelf

Unlike traditional distributors, Laurent-Perrier has its own sales force to create demand for its champagne and build direct relationships within the market. Salespeople go out to retailer stores in order to pitch the brand.

Field promotor Sylvie Craeye is one of the small sales team in Belgium and the only one to visit retail customers. “The stores decide whether our brand gets listed and stays on their shelves,” says Sylvie. “So, keeping them happy is essential for our success and growth. I visit them to see how they’re doing, talk sales with the store category managers, and present possible promotions, and also to help them improve presence on their shelves to ensure that our bottles gain exposure.”

Over the past two decades, Aptco Group has grown considerably, from a handful of employees in the early days to 150 in 2023. “We operate mainly in Western Europe,” says Financial Controller Kevin Lichtert. “There are branches in Belgium, the Netherlands, France, Germany, Switzerland, and Austria. We also sell in-house manufactured equipment through local distributors in the U.S. and Hong Kong.”

“I like to compare Aptco Group to a machine with a dozen gears. Each gear focuses on what it is good at: selling, in most cases. To avoid fragmentation and create synergies at the group level, all overhead, from HR and logistics to marketing and administration, is covered by our HQ. For example, we all use the same CRM.”

Reduce administrative hassle and cost

Visiting customers, talking to them face to face and closing deals: that’s what Sylvie loves about her job. Yet, she used to spend at least 1 day a week doing administrative tasks – while efficiency is key in a small sales team like that at Laurent-Perrier Belgium.

“Being tied to a desk to schedule my visits, write reports, and fill out forms and spreadsheets is not my favorite job,” Sylvie admits. “More than being time-intensive, the manual way of working did not provide the clear, detailed overview of data that we needed to optimize sales.”

“The stores decide whether our brand gets listed and stays on their shelves,” says Sylvie. “So, keeping them happy is essential for our success and growth."

Solution

When the sales manager Stijn de Graaf discovered Cegeka Fearless Leader, he was confident the solution would seamlessly meet their needs. Within a week, the mobile CRM app was live.

Winning time and money

Fearless Leader supports automatic scheduling, route calculation, store checks, tracking, reporting, analysis, and forecasting, and is seamlessly integrated with Microsoft Outlook. In this way, Sylvie saves up to a full working day per week: “The app helps me schedule appointments based on map pins, automatically calculates the best route, and helps me navigate. That saves me precious time, traffic jam frustration, and even helps us cut fuel costs.

In addition, I have all the customer data at hand in the app, which makes it easy to prepare my visits and respond to possible questions in the store. During the visit, I can jot down quick notes, register orders, and take pictures of the shelves. All the information is saved in the customer file for my later reference. Even if my internet connection fails, which often happens in supermarkets, the data is stored safely.”

Real-time insights to boost sales

Sylvie is not the only one to benefit. Sales & Key account manager Stijn de Graaf too has real-time access to exactly the same data – and much more. All checks, comments, and orders are logged in the office systems right away, giving him a crystal-clear overview of every detail per customer.

“I no longer have to update lists, compile reports, or send Excel sheets,” says Sylvie. “My colleague Stijn gets a perfect overview of sales, price agreements, rotations, out-of-stock issues, sales promotions, etc. He even sees how our champagne is presented in every store, thanks to the pictures.”

Happy sales reps, happy customers, and more sales

“Cegeka Fearless Leader was built to help sales reps at food and beverage companies to focus on what really counts: visit as many customers as possible and maximize the time you spend with them, rather than on administration. That invariably leads to a happier sales team, satisfied customers and, last but not least, more sales,” Tom concludes.

“The app saves me up to a full day per week. More than that, it takes away traffic jam frustration, and even helps us cut fuel costs.”

Approach

Up and running in no time

“Fearless Leader has been developed specifically for the Fast Moving Consumer Goods market, accumulating over 10 years of experience in that sector,” explains Tom Moortgat, business development manager at Cegeka. ”It provides a seamless, standard workflow for field workers in FMCG that perfectly fits the way Laurent-Perrier works. So, all we had to do was upload the customer data to customize the app to their needs. As it’s a cloud application that is based on Microsoft Dynamics 365 and runs on any device, the app was up and running in no time.”

Mastering with ease

All the sales team then needed was a short training session to get started. Sylvie confirms the app is exceptionally user friendly: “I'm not really tech-savvy, but I mastered it with ease. And whenever we have a question, Tom is our single point of contact. He’s always around to help us out."

“I'm not really tech-savvy, but I mastered it with ease. And whenever we have a question, Tom is our single point of contact. He’s always around to help us out."

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