To close deals with customers in any industry, it’s best to avoid delays and search for ways to achieve peak productivity. That’s certainly a goal that interests Hoffmeyer Company, Inc., the West Coast’s premier supplier of industrial rubber products, conveyor belts, power transmission equipment, and industrial and MRO supplies. Their highly skilled team provides on-hand expertise and insight to deliver custom solutions that increase productivity and efficiency.



We sat down with Josh Kaplan, Hoffmeyer’s Regional Manager in Northern California and Las Vegas, to dive into how Recurrency eases his travel-heavy role and helps him increase sales across the customer base. We discuss:



• How even the most computer-averse employee can utilize Recurrency tooling
• Why the recommended reorder and opportunities feature is a game changer
• How Recurrency insights enable better employee workflows



“As a regional manager, I’m trying to take that 10,000-foot view over everything going on. But I’m definitely a sales-involved manager, and I still like closing deals. Recurrency helps me have that satisfaction.”

- Josh Kaplan, Regional Manager @ Hoffmeyer

Why Recurrency is the Solution for On-the-Road Sales Reps

Before Hoffmeyer, Josh had spent multiple years working in distribution and had gained experience working with different legacy ERP systems.



He had one major issue with those legacy systems that cropped up constantly. Most of his time as an Outside Sales Rep was spent on the road, and other systems needed a VPN connection. That meant it was useless to him on the (many) days he wasn’t in the office.



Recurrency, in contrast, quickly became Josh’s go-to program on the road because he could access it right on his phone or jump on the Wi-Fi at Starbucks to use it on his computer.

Recurrency Streamlines the Entire Sales Rep Process

Recurrency helped Josh do final info brush-ups in the parking lot before meetings. He had, of course, already done his prep research, but it was effective to have immediate access to customer info like:



• The sales and quote history
• Which products they were using, and which ones they weren’t
• Recurrency insights, such as historical purchase patterns and upsell recommendations



That meant he had it all at his fingertips wherever he went – and now so do his reports.



The solution also helped post-meeting when he could use it to take notes instead of writing on his tablet and forgetting to enter it on the computer later. That locked it all in for him while giving his management visibility that he’s out on the job making calls.



“The program does exactly what it’s meant to and more, which is to not only avert churn but also do quite a lot to help sell to the customer.”

- Josh Kaplan, Regional Manager @ Hoffmeyer

Using Recurrency is Low Lift from Day One

Josh says learning to use Recurrency was “very, very seamless.” He’s used CRMs and other sales programs in the past, but Recurrency was incredibly easy by comparison.



He notes that the responsiveness of Recurrency’s team is also a significant asset. When his team put in a feature request, the dev time until implementation was impressively quick. Recurrency’s real-time support availability, in his words, is on a different level entirely compared to other service vendors.



Salesforce, in comparison, is huge in the industry – but its size hampers its real-time support system. It’s difficult to have real conversations with Salesforce unless you have a dedicated Salesforce admin on your team that goes in and encodes requests for you. With Recurrency, response times for requests, discussions, and questions aren’t an issue; they’re a benefit.



Josh can put in requests to his Customer Success Manager, set up a call with them, and rely on follow-up calls until they get to the bottom of the issue together.

Immediate Improvements with Recurrency

Once he joined Hoffmeyer, one of the employees under Josh hadn’t started using Recurrency even though he’d received initial training – old tech habits can be hard to break.



So, Hoffmeyer set him up with additional training and an extra monitor so he could have Recurrency open at all times. Since, he’s remarked to Josh, “Man, this is so easy to quote on.” A couple of additional Recurrency benefits that Josh noted are:



• The quotes are nice and tidy – you always want the stuff you’re sending your customers to look attractive, and quotes sometimes look off without a lot of effort.
• It’s great when teams are stretched thin – the improved efficiency it introduces picks up the slack.



“The Recurrency team has been incredibly responsive to feature requests from day one. I find them so responsive to requests, discussions, and questions.”

- Josh Kaplan, Regional Manager @ Hoffmeyer

A Game Changer: The Recommended Reorder and Opportunities Feature

Josh cites several major Recurrency features and tools that make his job easier:



• The recommended reorder and opportunities feature, which, in Josh’s words, creates major improvements to how teams approach sales
• The search feature is far easier to use than searches in other programs. The ability to do typo-tolerant searches, especially when it comes to SKUs. This is a game-changer as other systems were unusable without exact SKUs. Now, he has to memorize so much less.
• The reporting tools supply easy visuals on how the accounts are doing over time.



The reporting tools are also super applicable to Josh’s customer success background. They give him a visual into how accounts are doing over time with graphs and arrows – he’s always hoping for a nice, green, up arrow, but if an arrow’s pointing down, that’s also good info to have.



Seeing those trends allows him to ID which customers he needs to attend to, especially now that he’s approaching things from the management executive side. He can step in at the right time to support sales reps on call and build long-term, healthy relationships.

The Reorder Opportunities Feature Drives Customer Retention

One time, Josh was perusing the customer accounts and realized he hadn’t heard from one of them in a while. Using our Reorder Opportunities tool, which displays client purchase histories and trends, he saw they’d regularly ordered three pallets of 18/80 stretch film for years.



Their next order should’ve come in months ago, and permanently losing their business could be a big loss, both financially and in terms of the relationship itself. Josh connected with the customer and went out to lunch with them, not to push sales but to do an account health check-in.



He found out they had a new buyer working with a different vendor. In the end, Recurrency helped Josh get the account back. During this check-in, he demonstrated that while their new vendor was selling at a lower price, the film they received was of lower quality.



They’d end up needing more of it for the same tasks, therefore not saving the money they imagined. Recurrency’s platform allowed him to have a face-to-face conversation with the customer and win back crucial business.

Recurrency’s Countless Customer Benefits

Josh is always focused on the success of his customers. The reorder opportunities feature is an excellent example of something that makes his customers’ lives easier by helping him proactively suggest product. This benefits his customers in a few critical ways:



• It shows them that Josh is paying attention to their needs
• It ensures they never fall behind on products and pause their production line
• Their needs are swiftly addressed because Josh has a program proactively telling him what’s coming up



“Recurrency features are super useful because they’re much easier to use than other programs. That’s just a huge thing for me.”

- Josh Kaplan, Regional Manager @ Hoffmeyer

How to Drive More Efficient Workflows with Recurrency

As a Regional Manager, Josh’s purview on sales has broadened, but he’s still interested in the nitty-gritty of the sales process. Recurrency allows him to:



• Look for potentials in terms of reorders and reaching out to clients
• Flag potential issues, like when someone doesn’t complete a reorder cycle
• See what his team’s up to and what they’re working on so he’s always up to date
• Utilize the value of his position by ensuring executive involvement happens at the right times



Recurrency, at its essence, allows Josh to set up his customers, team, and reports for success. It also gives him a crystal clear, 10,000-foot view into the business’s health.



Josh elaborates that he leans on the reporting tool and keeps his sales dashboard tab open to see comparisons between months-to-date this year and last year. It helps him stay on target.



Easily keeping tabs on accounts also helps him dole out positive reinforcement. One of the best parts of his job is calling his sales reps and congratulating them for their wins – something he loves to do as a manager.



Looking upwards on the food chain, Recurrency helps Josh have efficient catch-ups with his own boss, whose time is pretty limited. Josh can easily cite account info due to all the real-time data at his fingertips.



Recurrency’s Top 3 Benefits for Sales Reps

Josh’s background in sales gives him good insights into the top three aspects of Recurrency for sales reps:



1. The reorder opportunities feature operates as a safety net for Josh by catching things he didn’t see. It’s like why he uses Google Maps when he drives to work even though he knows the route – it knows about accidents Josh can’t predict.
2. Travel time management – When Josh is in a city, he can filter down all the accounts there and see if there are any extra action items: customers he can connect with or opportunities to pursue to further optimize his time on the road.
3. Real-time stock info – Having stock info on hand for all of Hoffmeyer’s branches and the ability to quote on the fly really helps drive sales. Josh doesn’t have to go back to the office, log into P21, and generate a quote that he relays to the customer. He can drive sales in person based on the conversation and his observations at the worksite.



“I’m a firm believer that team and customer success go hand-in-hand. Recurrency really enables both of those things simultaneously.”

- Josh Kaplan, Regional Manager @ Hoffmeyer