Polly’s Brew Co is saving time and growing trade revenue with Sellar
Intro to the brand
Polly's Brew Co. is a reputable independent brewery based in North Wales whose focus is brewing super modern, fresh, hoppy beers. And lots of them! With a small team of just 8, with 2 team members involved in trade sales, Polly’s is bursting at the seams with growth and ambition.
Alex, Polly’s Trade Sales Manager, explains how Sellar has helped them to increase revenue and productivity within the sales team.
The Problem
Battling sales admin
Before Sellar, Alex and Arron at Polly’s would deal with hundreds of trade sales emails per week about availability, pricing and delivery updates. Stock was hard to keep track of across their different channels and this could often result in overselling and customers ordering products they thought were available. With Alex and Arron almost fully consumed by sales admin, this left little time in the week for generating new business.
Traditional B2B e-comm platforms are unsuitable
Traditional B2B e-comm solutions available in the market are clunky, overly complicated and cost thousands of pounds per month. They can also be transactional, impersonal and cold, leaving customers feeling disconnected from the brand. The hospitality industry is inherently relationships based.
Nationwide distribution is expensive
For Alex and Arron, the greatest growth opportunity lies in getting their beer further afield. Previously their options limited them to high MOQ (minimum order quantity) on draught and expensive courier rates for packaged products.
The Solution
A self-serve trade ordering platform
With just one link, responsive across mobile, tablet and desktop, Polly’s can send their customers to an always open, always up-to-date digital product list. Each of their different customer groups is set up with personalised pricing, discounts and product formats so they can see what’s available and quickly and easily place their orders. Customers also have access to fast re-ordering, full order history and historic VAT invoices.
Integrated systems
“We don’t have to send 1000 emails, ‘sorry we’re sold out’, ‘sorry we’re sold out’. It also helps us sell our stock faster because customers can see how quickly products are selling out in real-time”
Alex
Sellar integrates with Polly’s internal brewery management system, Breww. This means that all of their inventory, customers and orders are neatly synced in real-time between systems and orders through Sellar are pushed back into Breww for internal processing and accounting. No double keying orders into different systems, no miscommunications about stock and less admin work.
Cost-effective, nationwide distribution
With Sellar Shipping, our integrated shipping service, Polly’s can ship their full product range (steel kegs, plastic kegs and cans), nationwide, at cost-effective rates and all with just a few clicks. No clunky courier portals or complicated pricing. Customers also get full access to their courier order tracking from their account on Sellar and can set their delivery preferences.
Polly’s are projected to save £9.6k this year from Sellar Shipping vs their previous shipping solution for sending packaged products to trade customers.
The Results
More time for sales activity, less time for admin
From previously hundreds of order email threads per week to now over 70% of Polly’s trade orders coming from customers who have self-served and ordered through Sellar. Enabling their customers to order at their convenience has freed up over 40 hours per month to focus on new revenue-generating activity and building relationships with new customers.
“Not coming into the office to see 96 unread emails off the back of our availability list is a big improvement. Sellar really slows down the amount of email traffic we get and makes my Monday’s a lot happier. Our trade customers can order anytime, any day.”
-Alex
For customers who aren’t quite there with online ordering, we created accounts for all of Polly’s customers on Sellar so that they could quickly process orders on their behalf. Sellar would still send order status update emails, VAT invoices and easy next steps to claim their account to view availability and order for themselves. This led to the greatest adoption of self-serve ordering for Polly’s and further reductions in sales admin.
A wider net of customers to sell to
As a result of Sellar Shipping, this has opened up a huge new market for Pollys, enabling them to service customers who want to order kegs, but who can’t commit to a whole pallet order.
Faster conversion of prospects to new customers
Instead of new customers waiting for Alex or Arron to respond with a price list and new account form, new customers can now view live product availability and set themselves up with an account in minutes. Once the customer places their first order, this creates the account in Breww. Job done.
“I send new customers a link directly to Sellar. It’s the fastest way for us to onboard new accounts”
- Alex