Atlas Copco ontwikkelt innovatieve duurzame compressoren, vacuüm oplossingen en luchtbehandelingssystemen, bouw- en mijnbouw apparatuur, elektrisch gereedschap en assemblagesystemen voor zijn klanten in meer dan 180 bedrijven over de hele wereld. Het bedrijf koos in 2013 voor Showpad vanwege diens flexibiliteit, intuïtieve interface en gebruiksgemak.

How does Atlas Copco use Showpad’s sales enablement platform?

Nice thing is we publish centrally, they get a pop up, there is new content, they download the new content, and they start using it the next day in front of their customers.

What is Atlas Copco?

Atlas Copco is the market leader when it comes to building compressors. Besides compressors, we also are known for mining equipment, construction equipment, and electric tools. If you look at our division, being responsible for service, we have about 830 total worldwide sales engineers, which are people that are going to customers and selling service. If you take a look at the whole Atlas Copco organization, we can easily say that taking all the business areas, probably around 3,000 sales representatives. Part of our sales is on the indirect channel. Our business model is to try to go to direct, but in regions where we don’t have the presence, we work with an indirect model as well as for our other brands. Besides Atlas Copco within the Atlas Copco group, we also have other brands of compressors and they are also mainly sold to the indirect channel.

How does Atlas Copco share content with its sales representatives? 

We have a central way of having information, but for a salesperson who is in a different country, it needs to be completed with local information. So when Showpad came up with a solution to add local content, we now have other countries that are on board. One example is the U.K., where we take the global content and add local information – it could be pricing information, could be local products. With that added local content, our sales reps started to use Showpad.

Then we have a rental division, which is part of of construction technique and they’re also using Showpad’s sales enablement solution. They’re using it through their sales people and have about 180 users using Showpad’s sales enablement solution for sharing information.

What are the most important sales enablement elements for Atlas Copco?

Within my role of communications and competence development, it’s crucial to have information timely. We monitor how fast we get information from a central point to the point of use. For example, if I create a marketing piece for salespeople, how fast will the salespeople receive this information in front of customers? If I go back to the old days, we used printed brochures. With printed brochures, they have to be printed first, then they have to be shipped, locally translated, and then people use it. Back then, sales reps still had a stack of the old brochures and sales materials set up. Now with digital information, you can go faster.

How has Atlas Copco’s sales process evolved with sales enablement?

The sales process has evolved from selling products to selling solutions. If you want to sell solutions to customers, you have to figure out what are the needs of a customer. Showpad allows you to quickly change from seeing the customer is not interested and deduce into something else because you have all the information with you.

How does Atlas Copco’s sales team use Showpad’s sales enablement platform in the field?

Sales reps create sales presentations from here to there. They jump from left to right depending on what the customer is interested with. With that, they build basically a portfolio and at the end of the sales form they tell their customers they’ll send additional information to you and the customer has all this information. No more back office to be done. Sales reps now say, “I’ve got the sales collateral now, what is our prospect interested in, let’s prepare all the leaflets and send all the links.” You do it on site.