Birkdale Manufacturing Group Limited is a well-established, UK-based manufacturer. Originally specialising in garage doors and roller shutters, they now have a vast range of garage doors, composite doors, awnings, pergolas, patio enclosures, electric blinds, and more. They live by their slogan, “Driven by quality dedicated to you, ” ensuring they remain leaders in their field.

However, as with many manufacturing businesses, generating qualified leads and keeping track of their progress turned out to be quite a problem for Birkdale. But with the help of SaleSqueze, they turned things around quickly and increased their sales.

The Problem: Wasting advertising budget and a disoriented sales team

Birkdale is attacking a massive market in the United Kingdom, where there is a lot of competition and intense rivalry between businesses. This competitive environment has had a significant impact on lead generation and lead acquisition. Birkdale was allocating vast sums of its marketing budget to social media advertising, but this had little effect on acquiring new leads.

There were also problems within the sales team, who were experiencing a lot of confusion. Sales staff could not keep up with potential customers, so they didn’t know the best way to move through the stages of the sales process. Another problem was the issuance of the offer – there was no breakdown of the final price, thus no transparency for the end buyer.

Birkdale’s most important sales channel was wholesale trading through Costco UK. However, they wanted to set up a channel through which they’d have direct access to end customers, as well as be able to involve partners. Simon Sturman, the CEO of Birkdale, is always looking for innovative ways to present their bespoke products and understands that online sales is becoming an increasingly important – if not the most important – sales channel. As the pandemic hindered the company’s growth, Birkdale’s management team decided to present its garage doors to the public via a product configurator.

SaleSqueze + Birkdale: Tailor-made product configurator with optimized advertising

We started working with Birkdale through an established consulting process in which we identified their challenges in selling garage doors. Based on the information we obtained, we prepared wireframes of the product configurator. Together with Birkdale, we precisely defined the customer journey through this software.

Following the approval of the wireframes, the SaleSqueze execution team began developing a custom product configurator. At the same time, Birkdale employees started preparing the relevant materials.

The SaleSqueze team even got involved with advertising, setting up social media advertising campaigns.

“With SaleSqueze social media advertising strategy, we managed to develop our own channel for generating qualified leads and new sales,” adds Simon Sturman, CEO at Birkdale Manufacturing Group Limited

The Results: The cost of acquiring a new customer dropped by 425%, and the conversion rate increased to 7%

We solved Birkdale’s challenges by implementing the SaleSqueze visual CPQ, which covered four types of garage doors: sectional garage doors, roller garage doors, industrial garage doors, and security window shutters.

The visual CPQ is positioned on the Birkdale website. End customers can now use it to create garage door quotes online. The customer adds a garage door to the standard basket; once the customer has finished configuring the garage door and submits a request, an automatically-generated offer is sent to their mailing address.

The SaleSqueze visual CPQ for garage door manufacturers fully automates Birkdale’s online sales channel, which handles all business opportunities. Not only are customers delighted with the superior user experience, but the visual CPQ has also eliminated confusion in the sales team, providing them with an overview of the sales process and a means to track potential customers. All sales information is now stored in SaleSqueze’s system. We have also introduced reporting to the Birkdale sales team so that the tool is fully functional and ready for incredible growth.

We connected the SaleSqueze tool with an existing production tool. The integration allows automatically sending garage door orders into production when an order is completed. This reduces the time spent manually entering data into the system and removes the possibility of human error.

Results summary

Here’s what Birkdale achieved in 30 days of using visual CPQ for garage door manufacturers:

• Increased sales qualified leads by 371%
• Improved conversion rate to 7%
• 425% drop in the cost of acquiring a new customer
• Automating online sales channels, getting back time for building valuable relationships

If you, too, would like to increase your sales and automate online sales channels with a custom solution, get in touch, and let’s talk about it.