Anchor Packaging sells food storage material to businesses and consumers worldwide. If you’ve never used their material, you’ve likely gotten take-out from a restaurant that does. Anchor Packaging is a giant in their industry; every food service business and household requires some form of sustainable food packaging.

How does Anchor Packaging stay on top? Innovation. They make the highest-quality storage material in the business, and it shows. Customers taste the difference between food stored in Anchor Packaging and lower quality food storage materials.

Anchor’s problem was getting its product in front of the people who needed it most. As a wholesaler, Anchor Packaging produces their containers in-house, distributing them to resellers.

In the summer of 2016 they decided to innovate again. Anchor Packaging spent 3 months selling their product directly to buyers. They hired independent sales reps across the U.S. and gave them one goal – get the product in front of as many associates, chefs, and decision makers as possible.

This experiment was potentially very costly. Managing a wide-spread sales team from afar is no easy task. Anchor was looking for a way to keep their new sales team organized, on-task, and efficient.

Jeff Speerstra, District Manager for Anchor Packaging, chose Badger Maps to aid their summer sales campaign. Steve Benson, Badger’s CEO, interviewed Jeff about the experience.

Jeff integrated the entire sales team with Badger Maps. He wanted a system in place to help manage sales activity while giving reps an advantage in the field. The sales team was up-to-date on product knowledge, but they were facing an uphill battle. Developing new territory and making frequent prospective customer calls is difficult enough, and doing it without a management system is a nightmare. Badger gave the sales team a process in the field that also painted a clear picture for management.

Badger acted as their daily management system. Each week the sales team would use Badger to schedule appointments with business owners, and then to navigate to the daily meetings they had set.  If an appointment fell through, Badger let them find leads on the fly. Every rep had a small list of leads that they supplemented with Badger’s lead generation throughout the course of the sales cycle. This ensured not a single day of the 12-week sales cycle was wasted.

They set appointments, created routes, and made check-in notes for their appointments. At the end of the week, management could generate each rep’s activity report instantly. The sales team started each week by creating their routes. Badger made this a systematic process for the team. It took much less time to organize their daily routes than it did to drive around without a plan. The previous summer, before using  Badger, the sales team would pass valuable customers that they had to backtrack to later.

The sales team could visualize their customers directly on their device. This had a huge impact on every part of their sales process.

They set appointments, created routes, and made check-in notes for their appointments. At the end of the week, management could generate each rep’s activity report instantly. The sales team started each week by creating their routes. Badger made this a systematic process for the team. It took much less time to organize their daily routes than it did to drive around without a plan. The previous summer, before using  Badger, the sales team would pass valuable customers that they had to backtrack to later.

The sales team could visualize their customers directly on their device. This had a huge impact on every part of their sales process.

Planning was much easier after integrating Badger Maps into the sales process. Reps could zoom in on their territory and see every customer they needed to meet with. Badger’s route planning allowed Anchor Packaging to plan their routes weeks in advance, freeing up time to find new sales and new leads.

Badger provided a view of their territory they didn’t have access to before, where they could generate leads and add them directly to their route, as well as segment customers by industry type and priority.

Displaying customers visually was just what the wide-spread sales team needed to stay connected to each other and their territory. Anchor Packaging’s management team was pleased at how naturally Badger organized the team.

Badger Maps was key in helping the sales team orient themselves in an unfamiliar environment. The various visual details Badger provides allowed the team to quickly learn their sales territory. “Knowing who to follow up with and when to follow up with them,” was how Speerstra characterized it. They could login, pull up a map view, and visualize by priority level to see what was hot and where in their territory it was. Badger gave the team the power to interact more closely with their accounts and territory. They used the filtering feature to organize the map by whichever key data they wanted to see, such as last check-in date to ensure they were following up with their customers in the most effective way possible.

Badger linked Anchor Packaging’s management and sales team. Management’s insight into each rep’s field activity made planning and executing strategy in the field simple and streamlined.

The alignment of management and sales came with an increase in productivity and sales revenue. Integrating with Badger increased Anchor Pac’s weekly calls by 200% and their revenue by 900K. 

Management needed a way to act on results instantly. If a prospect ordered a hundred units, Anchor Packaging wanted to know as soon as possible. Speed of delivery is everything when developing in new markets.

Badger created a connection between Anchor Packaging and it’s new customers. Check-in reports let customer requests flow-in seamlessly, allowing quick response from management.

Each rep made a check-in at every meeting. These check-ins included detailed notes on the agreement made with each customer. Check-ins can be customized further by adding personalized drop-down menus and fields; such as person talked to, inventory amount, opportunity, and follow up. Every week, the check-in report for the team  is sent to the manager in one document, it’s also available on-demand anytime you need it.

The 12 week sales marathon benefitted Anchor Packaging in multiple ways. With Badger, Anchor Pac established a solid connection in the sales team between sales reps. The reps also saved 3 hours each week in administrative work with Badger Map’s check-in option and built-in routing features. Again, this became additional time they could use to find new leads and make more sales. Hundreds of opportunities for new leads were uncovered with Badger

The optimization feature helped Anchor Packaging’s sales reps to decrease their average route times by 50%. Not only does that mean less time spent on the road, but also less money wasted on gas.

Optimized routes allowed the sales reps to make an additional 2-3 more visits each day. On a weekly basis, that’s up to 20 extra calls a week. Coming from 15 a week before implementing Badger, this means an increase of more than 200%.

Anchor Packaging acquired an extra $900K in new incremental value – all within 3 months!

Because of Anchor Packaging’s success with Badger, the company was able to keep their new sales team organized, on-task, and efficient, while increasing sales and income.