No one understands the value of working with someone you trust and building lasting partnerships like the people at Stone Truck Parts.

After all, Keith McLemore and Don Purcell founded the business back in 2003 with the idea of serving local customers who were in need of a locally-owned parts distributor they knew and trusted in a world largely dominated by the mega-distributor.

So when Stone Truck Parts needed help reaching its potential, it’s clear the type of people they wanted to do business with. Those people turned out to be someone they were already working with, Karmak and their team of industry experts.

Initially, the business was struggling with conversion hangover. The company had just turned to Karmak software and they were having trouble getting the most out of it.

“We were struggling with getting our processes going again. We were really struggling with purchasing, pricing, and a lot of other things,” McLemore said.

To take advantage of his industry knowledge gained from years working in a business just like Stone Truck Parts, Karmak sent in business consultant Dave Clark. With his deep understanding of how a facility like this works, he was able to understand the issues they were having and get them straightened out quickly.

“Having someone who had walked in our shoes made a huge difference for us. It is a calming influence when you are frustrated with certain things. We got back on the right track,” McLemore said.

After seeing the value in having a trusted partner to help work through some of the unique issues the business was facing, McLemore reached out to Karmak again. According to McLemore, “It was time to come back and take another look at pricing and dig into it some more.”

Once again, Stone Truck Parts saw results.

“We had decent margins already, but we were able to tweak things and get a couple more points out of it,” McLemore said.

He was also complimentary of the back-to-basics approach used.

“Sometimes in business you focus on complicated issues, but if you forget the basics, that’s where you make the mistakes a lot of the time.”

But the biggest value for Stone Truck Parts had more to do with what the work put in will allow them to bring to their customers.

“Sometimes you can get distracted in business and take your focus away from the customer and that’s scary. Whatever it takes to get your focus turned toward customers, that’s what you want to happen. Because we weren’t so caught up in our internal processes anymore, the work put in allowed us to turn our focus back to our customers.”

For someone who owns a business built on the expectation of 100% customer satisfaction, that’s no small change.

McLemore is sold on what having a lasting partnership with Karmak industry experts like Dave Clark can bring to his business and his praise couldn’t be much higher. “I can’t imagine, in our industry, there is anyone better suited to come into your business to match your business needs with how the Karmak system works.”