How Village RV Empowers its Team with Online Sales Management

Village RV is a family-owned business. The business was started back in 1970 by a team of three partners: Darren Gelowitz, Bill Ortman, and Tony Resline. Since then, the dealership has been maintained by their families, with the next generation carrying on their legacy.

Larry Ortman is Bill’s son and the current Customer Service/Business Development Manager at Village RV. But as is the case with most dealership employees, he does more than just that. He also handles all the company’s consignments, backs up the sales manager, and desks deals. It goes without saying that he’s got a lot on the go at one time.

Village RV has been using IDS to power its business for a decade now. The team works closely with IDS to find solutions to challenges it faces in a rapidly changing market. One such collaboration was Village RV’s early adoption of SalesCRM Online, a powerful sales management platform that integrates with IDS’s Astra G2.

We spoke with Larry to get his perspective on the benefits of using an online CRM platform, and how it has changed the way his team serves customers for the better.

How does SalesCRM Online help your team desk deals faster?

Larry Ortman: “Probably the main advantage, as far as I’m concerned, is the ability to access your customer information and do input or deal work remotely. Which is tremendous for the salespeople; they can be out in the lot and bring up on their phone and that’s a huge convenience.

That’s the key. I’m set up at home. So, I’ve done work at home without having to come in on the VPN because it’s in the cloud. I can just go online. I have access to it. I’ve actually done several different things on my phone away from the dealership.”

What kind of flexibility does SalesCRM Online provide your team?

Larry Ortman: “Well, on their days off, the salespeople are able to log in and work on certain aspects of the deal on their phones or from their home computers online.

I have used it away from the dealership. I’ve been in big box stores and got a call from one of the sales guys that I need to look at a particular deal. I was able to bring it up, standing right there in the store and looking through the details. SalesCRM Online has brought that interconnectivity.

That’s the biggest strength. Being able to have access to the critical information that you need for a deal without sitting in front of your terminal. I can’t stress enough how important and convenient that is.”

How does SalesCRM Online fit into the rest of your workflow in IDS?

Larry Ortman: “We use the service and parts and sales modules, as well as accounting. It’s integrated our entire company; we can access information from department to department on a customer, which is tremendous.

SalesCRM Online is a very convenient tool. You have one input, and the whole company can access that customer. All the trade information is there, including all the information about the customer and the unit that they’re looking at. It’s all been input ahead of time, which saves a huge amount of time for whoever’s desking the deal.

From a salesperson’s perspective and from a sales management perspective, the sales manager can sit down after the information has been input at his terminal, bring up the quote, and all the information is there. He just has to desk the deal.”

What advice would you give to someone who is considering switching to IDS?

Larry Ortman: “What I would say to anybody who’s not using IDS is that we’ve been extremely happy with how IDS has served us and what it’s enabled us to do.

From documenting all the important customer information we need to operate our business, whether they be service parts customers or sales customers, and putting it all into one package—it’s a very important tool. We couldn’t be without it now. I can’t imagine coming into work and not having IDS.

We came from a time of handwriting everything. We’ve been around since 1970. Everything was done by hand. Everything was done on paper. Then we went to a Microsoft program, which was really a spreadsheet program; very rudimentary, very simple. From there, we jumped into IDS, which was a huge jump for us.

It’s a very powerful program. I would encourage anybody who wants to get into a program that can help their business to collect the data they need to help them do the accounting and keep track of service, parts, and everything they have going on. This will make their leadership’s lives much easier. Give them concise and accurate data and enable them to operate their business more efficiently. IDS is a great tool.”

What do you think of IDS’ support?

Larry Ortman: “It’s been very good. Their response time is very good. I’ve had a great experience with all the support staff. They take our stuff seriously.”