Linthorpe Trade Supplies / BG-Demo – Discovery
Callcompleted
Linthorpe Trade Supplies · 5 Apr 2024 10:30
Darren described manual work across CRM, emails, accounting and spreadsheets, with half an hour or more per customer query. He accepted a month's setup as reasonable and asked for a demo and a quote.
What was said
What this says
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026Darren described manual work across CRM, emails, accounting and spreadsheets, with half an hour or more per customer query. He accepted a month's setup as reasonable and asked for a demo and a quote.
What happened: Tom Ashdown ran a discovery call with Darren Blakey, Sales Operations Manager, on 5 Apr 2024. Darren said complaints, deliveries and credit questions are handled manually across several systems.
Customer view: Darren said the CRM, emails, accounting system, logistics data and spreadsheets all hold part of the picture. He agreed it easily takes half an hour or more per query and that the team cannot always answer the customer straight away.
Commercial: Tom said the setup would take about a month and the implementation would be in the low twenties. Darren asked for a demo and a quote and said he is interested.
Watch: Darren's role suggests he is an evaluator, and the call does not show who holds budget. The call does not show a tier or a connector list.
Themes
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026Theme
Manual information flow discovery
Importance
upsell
Sentiment
positive
Voice
user
Who was there
BG-Demo
CRMmade from
Them
CRMmade from
Follow-up
Next steps
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026- Tom Ashdown to send Darren Blakey demo dates the following week.
- Tom Ashdown to send a proper quote once scope is agreed.
- Tom Ashdown to involve the customer's IT contact, Liam, in connector setup.
Risks
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026- The call does not show who holds budget or signs, and Darren's role may not be the final decision-maker.
- Tom gave only an indicative price range, so the customer's expectations on cost are untested.
Opportunities
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026- A new-business opportunity to connect the CRM, accounting system and logistics data into one queryable layer.
- Darren asked for a demo on the customer's own data and a proper quote.
Transcript
Tom AshdownHi Darren, cheers for making the time this morning. How's your week shaping up?
Darren BlakeyGood, yeah. Busy as ever in the wholesale game. What can I do for you?- Tom AshdownSo, I wanted to have a chat about how you guys are managing information flow in your business. You know, from a sales and operations perspective. I read up a bit about Linthorpe: you're dealing with a lot of trade accounts, doing delivery, handling complaints and credit questions. That right?
- Darren BlakeyYeah, that's the game. We've got accounts all over Teesside, some further afield. We're managing deliveries, handling customer complaints, chasing credit. It's all quite manual at the moment.
- Tom AshdownManual, yeah? So walk me through that, when a customer rings up with a complaint about a delivery, what does that look like on your end?
- Darren BlakeyUsually they call our ops team or sometimes email. We've got the record in the system, but then someone needs to cross-check with the actual delivery notes, look at the order, see if there's a credit issue. It all lives in different places, CRM, emails, the accounting system. Takes a good while sometimes just to get the full picture.
- Tom AshdownRight, and that's time you could be spending on actually looking after the customer instead of digging about. What systems are you using? What's in the mix?
- Darren BlakeyWe've got a CRM for the accounts, we're using the accounting system for invoices and credits, and we get delivery data from our logistics partner. There are spreadsheets as well, always spreadsheets.
- Tom AshdownHa, yeah, spreadsheets are always part of the story, aren't they? So that's probably half an hour or more per customer query, just hunting for information?
- Darren BlakeyEasily that, yeah. And we can't always answer the customer right away. We have to go back and check things, ring them back. It's not great.
- Tom AshdownThat's the pain point we solve. So what we do is we pull all that data together into one queryable layer: your CRM, your accounts, your delivery info, all of it. Your team asks a question about a customer, and you get the answer instantly. No more switching between systems or hunting through emails. We call it the brain.
- Darren BlakeySo it's like a search tool across everything?
- Tom AshdownThat's it, basically. You type something in: a customer name, an order number, whatever, and you get back everything about them across the board. There's more to it than that, dashboards and that, but that's the core idea. No drama.
- Darren BlakeyThat's interesting. How does it actually grab all that data?
- Tom AshdownWe build connectors to each of your systems: your CRM, the accounting tool, whatever you're using. They talk to each other securely and we pull the data in, then you query it through the brain. All lives inside your own data warehouse, so it's your data, full stop.
- Darren BlakeyRight. And you'd need to be involved to set that up?
- Tom AshdownYeah, there'd be a bit of work on both sides. We'd work with your IT team, Liam, I believe, to get the connectors set up and live. Probably a month or so of work, depends on your systems. But it's not disruptive.
- Darren BlakeyA month, that's reasonable. What does something like this cost?
- Tom AshdownSo there's an implementation fee and then an annual subscription. We'd have to work through the detail with you, but for a business your size, you're probably looking at low twenties on the implementation, then an annual fee after that. Happy to send over a proper quote once we've talked through scope.
- Darren BlakeyYeah, let's do that. Can we set up a demo, just to see how it would look?
- Tom AshdownAbsolutely. Let me get something in the diary for a few weeks' time, yeah? We'll do a demo on your actual data so you can see how it'd work for you.
- Darren BlakeySounds good. I'm interested.
- Tom AshdownGreat. I'll follow up with a couple of dates next week and we'll take it from there.
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