Artificial intelligence (AI) and automation release sales teams from day-to-day admin and planning tasks so they can close more deals – faster.
Jonathan Bein, Ph.D., Managing Partner of Distribution Strategy Group, recently played host to two expert panelists to discuss how technology can transform distributors’ sales processes:
- Jacobi Zakrzewski, vice president of technology strategy and solutions at Luminos Labs
- Kristen Thom, vice president of product at White Cup
How can technology unleash the true power of your sales team?
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Freeing Sales Teams to Focus on Relationships
Sales teams spend a lot of time figuring out who to call on; sifting through customers to determine what could move the needle takes time. The right technology can take some of this off their hands.
Today’s customer relationship management (CRM) platforms leverage data from across the organization to target tasks for accounts with declining sales or other metrics. They trigger automated emails or a task to call on the customer. The impact can be significant.
“One customer reported closing deals 75% faster from an opportunity to an order, and a lot of the efficiency stemmed from just knowing who to talk to at the right time,” Thom said.
In other words, these tools free up sales teams to focus more on building customer relationships. “It’s not about removing that relationship-building piece of it; it’s allowing sales reps to spend their energy thinking about and working on the customer relationship. That’s where we see a lot of the best adopters of tech.”
Optimizing Customer Experience
AI-powered technology in sales is people-centric. For example, AI can help the sales rep spot trends to understand what the customer is ordering more of now versus six months ago. It allows the sales rep to appear almost psychic, understanding what the customer’s needs might be next month or next quarter, and then serve as a consultant to help them stay ahead of the game.
“You can reduce customer frustration by suggesting products they don’t realize they need,” Thom said.
Instead of the customer figuring out they should have made the purchase when they were knee-deep in the project, the sales rep suggests it early on, saving them significant time. “By suggesting it now, you’re serving in that trusted advisor role, a consultative selling model so important in distribution,” Thom said.
These tools also pull in data from across channels – from the branch to the phone to online to an in-person visit. That continuity between sales channels “creates a more informed user, whether inside sales or outside sales,” according to Zakrzewski. “We want to create a unified experience from an offline to an online perspective.”
This eliminates inconsistencies. Getting one price from the ecommerce site and one from a field sales rep doesn’t do much for the customer experience. Distributors and their customers grow frustrated, quotes and inventory are botched, and opportunities missed.
“They may have an ecommerce site up and running parallel to sales, marketing and customer service activity. However, having visibility of what’s happening on the ecommerce site available to your customer-facing teams is critical. It should all be one giant sales process.”
Tech Stack for Digital Transformation
To identify what you need, Zakrzewski suggested reverse engineering the fundamentals:
- What are we selling?
- How do we sell it?
- What do we sell it for?
- How do we deliver?
Thom said that, ultimately, a distributor’s tech stack should stem from a pain point. “Rather than start with, ‘Here’s a list of technology we need,’ you look at the business challenges and determine how the technology can solve them.”
But start with your foundation. “You don’t want to put the cart before the horse. Having that solid foundational ERP first is critical,” Thom said. “That data enables your CRM to do much more assuming it’s the right CRM. Ultimately, it’s not the number of systems in the business, but how these systems connect.”
Interoperability between four platforms trumps 10 siloed tools. “You add a lot more value to your team when we can utilize that system, not in a silo, but as part of your ecosystem.”
The Data Hurdle
It’s easy for distributors to become overwhelmed by AI when they haven’t even found the right CRM yet, or they’re embarrassed by the state of their data. That’s keeping many from moving forward.
However, Thom said these situations are perfect for today’s technology.
“I tell folks we’re at a point where the technology will help these issues. The barrier to entry for CRM, AI and all the different tools available has significantly decreased. Nobody has perfect data. Everybody thinks their data is the worst it possibly could be. You can get started. The tooling is there to help, and it doesn’t have to be a big scary mountain.”
Zakrzewski agreed, suggesting breaking data into domains like customers, products or inventory. This makes data more manageable and helps distributors determine which data to tackle first. He also suggested a broader ownership approach to data beyond IT.
“One of the biggest tenets I try to get IT folks to think about is not being responsible for all the data in the organization. Certainly, be a custodian of it, be a shepherd of the data, but don’t hold yourself accountable to being accountable and responsible for fixing all the data.”
AI is already good at data cleaning; the tools are growing more user-friendly with every iteration. “It becomes easier to adopt these new tools than ever before. I hear from folks, ‘Hey, my team is not tech-savvy enough to use these tools. They don’t have a basis in data science to understand and get the most out of it.’ But again, that’s where technology can help us. It’s about getting tools that are intuitive,” Thom said. “They don’t require a ton of training and initial input to start using them.”
Zakrzewski recommended starting small. “Maybe purchase a platform that has less bells and whistles and isn’t the Cadillac on purpose, simply because it’s the good first step. If you have too many ‘nerd knobs’ on a screen, people get overwhelmed.” But ultimately, he suggested, “If they’re happy using it, good things will come.”
The Bottom Line
Skepticism is understandable given many distributors’ history with some kind of software delivery that didn’t live up to the hype. The buzz around AI-driven sales tools is that they will free up staff time to focus on customers, not tasks. Are the returns real, though?
Thom said yes. “But that shouldn’t be your main value proposition. We work with a distributor who likes to say better technology gives the sales team more at-bats. With more at bats, they get more hits. I love that framing because it’s about how do we sell more? How do we get better at what we do? How do we improve customer relationships.”
Hear the full conversation on technology and sales in this program, available on demand.
