How Toyota Auto Finland spends 80% less time on sales prospecting

When Toyota Auto Finland decided to develop their B2B sales, they found Vainu. For Toyota, Vainu is more than a system provider. “Vainu provides us with a prospecting tool, and the Vainu team shares their sales wisdom with us,” says Jussi Granberg, Field Sales Manager.

The company

In Finland, Toyota operates through an importer and 54 retail stores. Before the company started using Vainu, new prospects were primarily found through static lists of companies close to the stores within target industries. These lists were created by the importer for the retailers. Sales reps went through the listings, and according to Granberg, they often weren’t too happy when the job finished: The lists were outdated, included duplicates, and were mostly frustrating for a rep to use.

With Vainu, retail stores can now do the prospecting work individually, which has sparked the long-lost joy of cold calling among Toyota sales reps.

The solution

Tommy Juuma is a successful sales rep from Toyota's retail store in the city of Raisio and is portrayed by Granberg as a professional and hardworking modern salesperson. For Juuma, Vainu provides a more natural way to get in touch with the customer. “The person on the other end of the telephone line pays better attention to what you have to say when you've knowledge about their company.” One time, Juuma noticed that a certain company was looking for a new employee and gave the company manager a call. “It was an easy way to start the conversation by asking how this new person is going to travel to all her meetings,” Juuma says with a smile on his face.

Overall, Juuma is happy with the versatility of the prospecting tool. One time, they were looking for a specific kind of construction companies close to their store. “We draw a circle on a map in Vainu that was 25 kilometers in diameter. Then we filtered out all but construction companies that have less than 5 million in revenue and less than 25 vans. The list of companies included only companies we needed to find with zero exceptions,” Juuma recalls.

Granberg, who works for the importer, works daily with Vainu to find target groups to share with retailers. One of the many ideas was to offer service packages for local companies that own Toyotas but don’t actively maintain their cars at Toyota stores. “First, we imported all the active customers to Vainu. Then we searched for all the local companies that have Toyotas and excluded all the active customers, resulting in a list of potential customers that we should give a call,” Granberg chuckles.

In another case, a deal once deemed lost was reopened.“Our sales rep had spoken with a prospect earlier, and according to the rep, the prospect had chosen to work with a competitor. To our surprise, Vainu vehicle data revealed that they hadn’t acquired cars from competitors either. The rep gave the company a new call which resulted in a multi-vehicle sale. This was especially great as this was one of the smaller stores which rarely received deals as big as this”, Granberg recalls.