How Neil’s Small Engine Slashed Service Times with TargetCRM

When Neil Adams began his modest endeavor to supplement his family’s income through side repairs, little did he know that it would expand into a robust operation known as “Neil’s Small Engine.”

With the help of his wife, in their first year alone, they generated $14,000 solely from repairs, establishing a strong foundation for their future growth.

Over time, their dirt floor workshop expanded to a prosperous multi-location dealership with locations in Larose, Houma, and Thibodaux, Louisiana. The journey over 44 years was filled with challenges and growing pains, but their persistence proved worthwhile. Today, they are deeply rooted in the industry, having the privilege of serving the third generation of their loyal customer base.

Their winning formula has always been to stay current and embrace modernization. Neil specifically credits their adoption of new technology, noting how “Keeping up with technology and new things like Charter has made a difference.”

In their ongoing pursuit of modernization, they recently added TargetCRM, a powerful tool that has enhanced their customer communications and further solidified their position in the market.

What was it like communicating with customers before using TargetCRM and the two-way texting feature?

Neil: “As far as communicating with our customers, we really didn’t have anything in place other than making phone calls and reaching them through emails. But email is not efficient at all. TargetCRM is really the first major thing that comes to us that is really helping us out.”

What are some challenges that the two-way texting feature helped you overcome in your service department?

Neil: “In the service department, it’s saving us a lot of time and energy by being able to text the customers individually. Especially when they have parts, they come in, or their repairs are ready, or we need to deliver a new machine. I’m looking forward to getting more mileage out of that by using the advertising features here and there.”

What results have you had with two-way texting?

Neil: “We did a blast. We had the 0% for 48 months that came in. It was very last minute, and it was too late to do any other type. The response was tremendous. It was immediate. It didn’t take any time at all for people to respond, and I saw some of the messages that came across that people didn’t opt out of. I was overly impressed by it.”

“The numbers don’t lie. The numbers don’t lie at all.”

There are people that really weren’t thinking about buying a new piece of equipment at this time, and when they got that, they realized there’s my time to do it. So, the text was extremely successful, I’m interested to see down the line, when the content changes, what it will be like because the content on the 0% hit a lot of people right in their back pocket.”

What are some of your goals for the service department, and how do you imagine using TargetCRM to achieve them?

Neil: “Well, what I’m hoping for is that it’s going to cut a lot of time that my employees spend communicating back and forth to their customers. They don’t have to spend that time on that telephone trying to get in touch with them and leaving messages. It’s just a simple click and they can send an invoice through the text.

The thing we’re waiting to really capitalize on is how it will work to receive payments. We’re not there yet, but once it’s implemented, it will be a real-time saver. It puts your employees in a much better situation to be more productive. It’s going to increase productivity. I look forward to that part of it. It’s going to help us out tremendously along that line, increasing the necessity for good communication. It’ll go far.”

What would you say to somebody who’s on the fence about getting two-way texting at their dealership?

Neil: “Now that we’re on board and we got a taste of it, we’re excited about seeing how far it can get us. We have nowhere else to go but up with it.”

“From what I’ve seen so far, it’s worth its weight in gold just to make our time more efficient. It’s a no-brainer.”

Is there anything else that you’d like to share with us about TargetCRM or Charter?

Neil: “When we began, we had a previous software company, but they weren’t as advanced when we opened our additional locations, so we had to look at something that was more efficient, and Charter, at the time, was the best show in town.

I think they still are because of the connectivity between the stores and the ability to communicate from store to store and seeing in real time what this store’s doing, what the other one’s got in stock, stuff like that, it’s immeasurable as to what that has done for us.

Adding TargetCRM to it – that’s a winner. I’m looking forward to more growth with it.

It’s perfect. To somebody that’s really thinking about getting in and they’re like on the fence, look, 44 years of business, I’m not exactly conservative to an extreme, but I always have a back door on anything we’ve ever gotten into. I don’t have a lick of college education at all. I’m just a broken-down mechanic that got lucky over the years.”

“You’ve got to go out there, and you got to take some chances. You’re not going to grow if you don’t take chances.”