Inside Sales Strategy

An analysis of distributor data often identifies a dozen or more variables, or markers, that segment customers in certain ways.

For many distributors, multi-channel only means adding e-commerce alongside field sales. However, there is more to multi-channel than just field sales and e-commerce. It might or perhaps should include proactive inside sales, vending machines, mobile, email, and SMS/MMS.

Distribution Strategy Group, in partnership with Modern Distribution Management recently completed a survey about inside sales teams. The survey was designed to understand the key activities and the importance of these activities to companies’ inside sales teams, along with measurements and challenges.

Companies typically start with small customers, grow some of them into large customers, continue to add new small customers and learn a lot from serving all of them.

Distributors and wholesalers have been dealing with the “small order problem” for decades. Now, more than ever, mastering the policies and procedures that are a near-complete solution to this issue is a necessary and fundamental skill for every distribution organization.

For most distributors, the top 10 percent of their customers represent 60 percent to 90 percent of that distributor’s revenue. Those customers are well served by field sales reps. The remaining 90 percent of the customers, often called house-accounts, have 10 percent to 40 percent of the total revenue.

If you give a salesperson 100 accounts to call on, odds are he or she will actively work the top 20 to 30, receive calls from the next 20 to 30 and ignore the remaining accounts. While this salesperson is busy maximizing his or her commission by focusing on the larger accounts, the company is…

Over the last 20 years, there has been a broad movement by distributors to make operational improvements such as supply chain management, process standardization, lean production, and others. These practices, though not universally deployed among distributors, have created tangible efficiencies that manifest at the bottom line. While there is still more benefit to be realized…

Data points in time indicate a real trend either up or down less than half of the time. By tracking trends, we can do a better job matching our expenses and cost-to-serve with the business, without fuss or emotions.