Do you know how little time sales reps have to make a great first impression with a customer? Less than 10 seconds.
A good sales rep can uncover pain points, get insight into a customer’s business and then (assuming there’s a fit) position your products and services as the ideal solution. All in a matter of minutes. But what happens when you sell tens of thousands of products to thousands of customers across several sales channels? This becomes much harder.
This isn’t a new problem. Far from it.
I recently spoke to a distribution leader about this struggle. Over a decade ago, when he was a customer service rep, figuring out what to talk about with each customer was a challenge. When a customer called in, he only had limited time to talk to them. He didn’t cross-sell or up-sell because he didn’t have enough time to figure out what was relevant for that customer. As a result, he would just take their orders and move on.
Even after his promotion to an outside sales rep, he’d default to selling customers more of what they were already buying. And taking their orders. He was still acting like a customer service rep – but one who would visit customers.
While there are thousands of things reps could talk to customers about, there are only a handful they should talk about. Figuring out that handful is a challenge, even a decade later. When we spend a day co-traveling with reps, we notice most default to taking orders. It’s low-risk. A safe bet. If a customer’s already buying something, you won’t look misinformed if you suggest buying more. But that’s not an effective way to grow wallet share with customers. In a world where distributors sell hundreds of product categories and customers are often only aware of a subset of those categories, sales reps should be finding new categories to break into. And they should feel confident making recommendations – otherwise, most won’t.
How do you get reps to make recommendations? You take the guesswork out of the equation. Distributors have more than enough data in their ERP to personalize each conversation. Most distributors recognize it’d be very valuable if they could mine the data they have. Many even know that in the hands of their sellers, this data could drive additional revenue.
But how can they funnel this information to their sales teams?
How Data is Packaged Matters
The way you present data is just as important as the data itself. To truly empower your sales reps with customer insights, the data must be actionable and easy to use.
Think about it: Handing someone eggs, flour, vanilla, and frosting isn’t the same as giving them a beautifully decorated cake. Both have the same ingredients, but only one is ready for a party. It’s the same with your sales data. Your reps need it packaged in a way that’s useful and actionable.
Many distributors have tried to tackle this problem, but most solutions fall short. Let’s explore the most common approaches, why they often fail and introduce a method that actually delivers results.
Solution Attempt 1: Trying To Solve the Problem with Spreadsheets
Sales reps aren’t analysts; most struggle to extract valuable information from a spreadsheet.
“People confuse data with information, thinking reports and spreadsheets are enough. But it’s just data — it doesn’t tell you anything without comparisons or actionable insights,” Guy Lacey, a sales leader at beauty distributor Salon Services Pro, told our team.
Expecting sales teams to process hundreds of rows, columns and numbers doesn’t work. It’s unrealistic to ask reps to spend 20 minutes in the morning trying to convert 9,000 lines and columns of data into sales insights.
Solution Attempt 2: Trying to Solve the Problem with Analysts
Data analysts are expensive, and the process of mining data for insights can take days or even weeks. By the time the information reaches the sales reps, it can be stale and less relevant. We’ve seen this issue time and again: The delay in data delivery undermines its usefulness.
Another challenge we often see is it’s nearly impossible to measure the effectiveness of analysts sharing reports with sales reps. Are reps actually using that information? Without a good feedback loop between sales and analysts, it’s hard to know whether the cost of the analysis is worthwhile. If not, you’re left paying a high salary for reports that your sales team might not have the time or interest to review.
Solution Attempt 3: Trying to Solve the Problem with a Business Intelligence (BI) Tool
Like a spreadsheet, someone needs to know how to use the BI tool to get valuable information out of it. Sales reps need the insights a BI tool can bring, but there’s a steep learning curve. Often, we see BI tools siloed from the CRM, which is the main system sales reps use. To access the BI tool, reps have to log into a separate system. They log out of their main screen and go to another to access BI tools. This extra step drastically reduces the likelihood that reps will use the BI tool. Because of this, most reps don’t leverage these tools.
Data visualization is important. Management should use BI tools to make better decisions. But often distributors invest in a BI tool for their sales team and find they don’t have anyone on the sales team who can use them to get good insights. It becomes unclear whose responsibility it is to use the BI tool to turn the data into insights for sellers. With a learning curve too steep for an average salesperson, does the onus fall on leadership or, again, analysts to use the BI tools to pass insights to sellers? Maybe. But we’ve seen that when a middleman is involved to get insights to sellers, things fall short.
Better Conversations — How to Get Customer Insights to Sales Reps
How insights are packaged for sellers will make all the difference in customer engagement. Better conversations require a few best practices for handling customer data. Here are several to strive for:
1. Integration with existing systems: Customer insights should exist on platforms your sales teams are already using. For example, instead of making reps log into an external BI system, it’s more effective to have the recommendations in a CRM – a tool sales reps use daily to log customer conversations and do account reviews with their manager.
2. Immediate usability of insights: Recommendations should be clear, actionable and require minimal interpretation. Insights shouldn’t depend on the reps’ ability to perform complex data analysis. They should suggest specific actions. For example, “contact a customer about replenishing stock” or “introduce this specific new product they’re likely to buy.”
While insights written in plain language aren’t new, having them integrated into a system reps are already using is a game-changer. For example, AI-powered CRMs can prompt sellers with actionable recommendations right within their workflow:
Spot accounts that are underspending: An AI-powered CRM for distributors can analyze a customer’s purchase history and flag when a customer is spending less in a category than similar customers. The CRM can then suggest specific products to sell in this category, enabling the sales rep to have an informed, consultative conversation.
Send timely reorder notifications: AI-enabled CRM software can also keep track of purchase cycles and alert reps when a customer is due to reorder specific products. This proactive approach helps maintain customer engagement and prevent slippage. It’s another opportunity to make your sales team an indispensable, value-added business partner.
3. Feedback loop and impact measurement: There should be ways to track the outcomes of the insights. For example, if a sales rep discusses a specific product with a customer that leads to a sale, you should have a way of linking that transaction back to the insight that prompted the discussion. For reps, it’s motivating to see their conversations turn into revenue. For managers, it’s helpful to know which sales activities are actually driving revenue. For instance, a sales rep might excel at capturing wallet share in one category but be less effective in another. In this case, the rep’s manager could see the discrepancy and intervene with additional product training. If the sales rep gains confidence in the second category because of the training, they’d potentially have more conversations with customers about that category and close more customers’ spending gaps.
4. Insight timeliness: Customer-specific product recommendations should be real-time or near real-time to allow reps to act on opportunities promptly. Time kills all deals. You want to be armed with the relevant insights in the moment, not after it passes.
What if your sales teams had the insights they needed to improve the productivity of their customer conversations? How many more conversations could end with a close? What if each sale was larger? These are achievable outcomes with today’s modern AI tools.
Give Your Sales Team a GPS
Too much information can be just as harmful as too little when sales teams are managing hundreds of accounts. Information overload causes sales teams to fall back on muscle memory, resorting to old-school reactive sales methods. That’s why, if you shadow a rep in the field, you’ll notice they might be acting more like an order-taker than an order-maker. And if you sit beside a customer service rep at their desk, you won’t see them upselling customers who call in.
Distribution isn’t one size fits all. Are you giving your sales teams the tools to increase their productivity? It’s time to arm your reps with usable information they can act on immediately.
Benj Cohen founded Proton.ai, an AI-powered CRM for distributors. His company’s mission is to help distributors harness cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI) to drive increased sales. Benj learned about distribution firsthand at Benco Dental, a family business started by his great grandfather. He graduated Harvard University with a degree in Applied Math, and speaks regularly at industry events on the benefits of AI for distributors. Benj has been featured in trade publications including MDM, Industrial Distribution, and Industrial Supply Magazine. His company, Proton.ai, announced a $20 million Series A round of funding in 2022, led by Felicis Ventures. In 2023, Benj was recognized in Forbes 30 Under 30 – the first leader in distribution to receive such recognition.