6-Favor Those Who Favor You
Each year, Minick has his outside sales staff identify as many as 10 Target accounts, with the rest of the accounts getting A, B, or C labels. “Using the theory that 80% of your business comes from 20% of your customer base, I want to make sure my sales team is spending proportionate time and effort on accounts that have the most potential,” Minick says.
Minick expects his reps to visit Target and A accounts at least once weekly and make sure home-office staffers give them enough support to service and grow those customers’ purchases. As for the rest, “We still need to give them the best possible service and products,” Minick says. “We just want our outside sales staff to concentrate more of their time where we can get more return on our investments.”
7-Look for Holes Among Current Customers’ Buys
Dealers as diverse as Stine Lumber in Louisiana and TW Perry in Maryland have created sales reports that analyze, product type by product type, what a customer has purchased. The goal is to try to sell a wider array of products to existing customers. It’s commonly agreed that it’s easier to sell to a customer you know than to one you’ve never met, so why not look for category gaps in your current sales?
8-Shift the Burden
One big manufacturer decided to hand over some outside sales reps’ administrative duties, such as how to properly qualify and score leads, to administrative staff. That firm also has a policy of reducing the number of information requests and surveys sent to OSRs.
TW Perry has helped its sales reps work more efficiently by empowering customers to place orders and check stock inventory online. “Although we still verify everything before the orders are actually processed, it speeds up the cycle and allows our customers to bid material in the evenings,” says Lou Skojec, sales manager at TW Perry’s Chevy Chase, Md., store. “The sales person can then import the online quotes or orders into our POS system, making them more efficient as well.”
At the same time, there are some things that only the field staffers know and thus only they can report. In those cases, the goal should be to make inputting that data as pain-free as possible. Focus on what you need and don’t ask for reports that ultimately go unused. Measure what you treasure: Only those processes and activities that produce results and are valued by the customer.
9-Organize Your Prospecting
Consultant Ruth Kellick-Grubbs says that, on average, it takes 14 attempts to make contact with a prospect, and successful sales reps today should make at least 40 calls per week.
So how do you prospect efficiently? Steve Syron of Erie Materials in Syracuse, N.Y., a former ProSales Dealer of the Year, swears by contact management reports that list not only which customers a sales rep contacted in the past quarter, but equally important, those people who haven’t been contacted.
Erie divides its targets into five categories: New Prospects, Zero Accounts, Accounts Under $10,000 in Sales, Under-Achieving Accounts, and Customer List Unknowns. Sales reps are required to carry these lists, and branch managers discuss and review them at every sales meeting. “The last thing in the world you want today is a bunch of salesmen riding around aimlessly with no plan,” Syron says. “We’ve all but eliminated prospecting by wandering around.
“Don’t measure your territory managers by sales numbers alone,” Syron declares. “If the activities are there, the numbers will be there too.”
10-Say Goodbye to the Indifferent
“The one practice my sales team has stopped is spending valuable time with customers or prospects that have no interest in a partnership with us,” notes David Raskoskie of Elco Construction Products, Matthews, N.C. “Last year, I took a hard look at where our business was coming from and discovered that one half of our customer base was providing 2% of the sales revenue. … This 2% also absorbs a huge amount of time to service, time that is better spent building partnerships with customers who realize the value we offer.”
Another sales manager for a manufacturer in New York State employs the “three strikes and you’re out” rule. He quotes three large jobs to a general contractor, and if he doesn’t get any of those three he won’t take the time to write more quotes. “Either I am too high price-wise (OK, sometimes) or more likely, alI I am doing is keep- ing a preferred vendor honest,” says the rep, who asked to remain unidentified. “Putting together pricing and meeting specs is time consuming. I do let the builder know that we are always interested in his business, but please don’t waste our time. Seldom is the response one of outrage, and we actually have had some of these builders turn our way. This philosophy allows us to spend more time servicing clients that want to give us their business.
“Do we miss some opportunities because of this? Maybe, but I doubt it.”
TW Perry’s Skojec says his company has pretty much abandoned responding to faxes inviting it to bid. “For the most part they seem to be time-wasters,” he says. In addition, the dealer looks hard at all requests to do take-offs and bids to be sure it has a real chance at selling the job rather than merely cutting the price for some other bidder.
