Jefferson put out the call for an in-house marketing generalist when their 8 year old website started crashing. The code of the site was no longer being supported by their site host, and product updates were becoming increasingly problematic.

There also was a new corporate identity that had not been included in the original design, and there had been purchases and expansions to consider as materials were updated.

I was selected to fill the seat that had been empty for several years, and assist with many of the sales and Customer Relationship Managment systems that needed a refresh.

Jefferson also manufactures items for several large corporations, and materials were needed for these branded units.

A large part of my responsibility was to assure that the product information was consistent in all company materials. The online quote tool was dependent on the central database, so every change or correction made to print/web materials needed to be reflected in that document. Engineering changes made to meet updated government standards also needed to be changed in catalogs, websites and sales materials.

While I was at Jefferson, the CRM was revamped. Sales Force had been used for several years without full compliance by the team, and with half-hearted acceptance of its value. The central location for contacts and their quotations was the Quote Tool, so we undertook updates to make this unique system serve as a repository for customer information, sales rep effectiveness, and progress on large projects. I was the main contact with our outside IT developers, serving as the conduit of information and needs from Jefferson and returning quotations and project descriptions from the IT company.

While I was at Jefferson we also endeavored to increase communication with the sales force, increasing training materials, creating a special section in the website with resources, and sending information via MailChimp on a regular basis.

Jefferson Electric has manufactured transformers for over 100 years. They have a reputation as a cost effective, quality performer in their field. Recent acquisitions and extensions of their core business has brought marketing and production challenges.

The business model is a small group of company Regional Sales Managers responsible for setting up a group of independent sales representatives that work with OEM manufacturers and distributors. All sales efforts were for people not direct hires, competing for their sales efforts with other manufacturers of other product types. I was able to set up systems that made their requests for materials easier and more uniform. I also became their in house contact for questions about our online tools and was able to adjust development to better respond to their needs.

Jefferson has a team of electrical engineers that responds to unique customer challenges brought to them through the selling network.

Adobe Creative Suite was used for all projects. InDesign for print and sales materials, Acrobat for forms, with extensive use of fillable PDFs, utilizing formula features for calculations. Illustrator and Photoshop for logo and art preparation. Premiere Pro was used to edit self produced training videos uploaded to a YouTube channel.

Websites were built with WordPress software, with Elementor as the page layout foundation. Plugins were researched, installed, updated as necessary. Most of the sites were built with free versions of all, and our host, FlyWheel, was a great resource for backups, advice and technical help when needed. I also created an e-Commerce site using WooCommerce for the store and Stripe for payments.

I set up an Amazon account to sell overstock for one of our branches, and worked with several distributors as they built their on line stores and search engines.

Basecamp project software was used by outside suppliers for keeping projects flowing.

Jefferson has an IT company that maintains its JobScope software for inventory, customer service, invoicing and sales. I interfaced with them on pulling inventory information into websites and worked with Customer Service on creating training documents. This DOS-based software was one of the harder systems to learn and use.

The full suite of Microsoft products were used for day to day office work, from Outlook for email to Excel, a touch of Access for pricing, and Word because everyone uses it for their own documentation despite my best efforts to avoid it.