Inside Sales – On the Front Line of Customer Interaction

I cannot accurately comment on the “good old days” of

Computers were a bit scarce
when these suits were popular!

distribution; I wonder if anyone truly can.  Despite growing up in the industry and launching my career back when our country’s President was a Peanut Farmer, I don’t have a handle on historical perspective much longer than a few years ago.  A person would have to be wearing blinders; however, to have missed what I feel are the top changes in distribution over the past four decades.  I believe these five things have dramatically changed our industry:

1. Improved shipping logistics from UPS and others – This increased the coverage area for many distributors.
2. Computerization – Believe it or not, distributors didn’t have this in the 1970s.
3. Fax Machines – Customers expected faster response times and started asking for written quotations and confirmations of order dates.    
4. Email –This game changer moved expected response times to near instantaneous.
5. The Internet – Customers can access information from any supplier and often have as good of information at their fingertips as the distributor.

Thinking about these changes in terms of the way customers interact with the distributor, no group has been more affected than Inside Sales.  Extending further, no group has changed in importance more than the inside sales group.  

Back in the day, inside sales was mostly ignored by managers.  They saw inside sales as the launch pad for new outside salespeople as well as the final resting spot for folks who lacked the personality, drive or ambition to make it in outside sales.

Perhaps a leftover from the days gone by or because many distributor managers lack a strong understanding of the precise work done by the department, distributors struggle to provide processes for measuring and improving their inside team.  

Since we are often asked for process improvement ideas in this department, allow me to provide you with 20 quick ideas for establishing activity-oriented management by objective (MBO) bonus programs for specific inside sales work.  As with all MBOs, the plan is to develop skills or habits which become part of the inside department’s sales process.  

MBO Incentive Ideas for Inside Sales 

1. Follow-up on quotations 2-3 days after they are provided to the customer to gather additional feedback.
2. Add-on product sales to at least two orders per day.  These are products which naturally go along with the other things in the customer’s order. 
3. Selling some new product – not specifically an add-on sale.  The inside salesperson shares details on something new and customer specific.
4. Signing up customers for some training event.  I believe every inside salesperson should have a “goal” for the number of customers attending each training event.
5. Update the company CRM system with correct phone, email, title, etc.  What we see in most distributors is abysmal; Inside Salespeople can simply say, “While I have you on the phone, can we make sure your information is correct in our system?”
6. Capture names of other people at an account who might value from your products or services. 
7. Improve pricing strategy by ensuring the customer is in the right price class. 
• Small customers who have received “large account” pricing in the past.
• Misqualified customers, i.e.  End Users who are getting OEM pricing.
• Establishment of SPAs with manufacturers to improve margin when it drops below a specific percentage.
8. Gathering competitive information.
• Which local distributor is stocking which products?
• Who is actively promoting some new technology to customers?
• Who is offering special pricing deals to customers?
9. Capturing incoming freight on special order items.
10. Charging outgoing freight for small orders to small customers.  Strangely, inside salespeople are notorious for waving freight because they see it as a demonstration of customer care.
11. Working through and resolving open orders on a weekly (or more regular) basis.  Verifying open orders serves as a check against customer orders lost in your process. 
12. Proactively calling customers who have not placed an order for 30 days. 
13. Selling only package quantities of items coming in cartons of 10 or less.
14. Selling a product which has been identified as “dead stock”.
15. Entering more than (a specific number) of lines per month.  In some industries, the number is 300, while in other lines of trade, it can be double that number.  However, measuring and setting objectives seems to ramp up productivity. 
16. Scheduling a sales call for the outside salesperson.  This
    one requires visibility and coordination of calendars.  We recommend that anyway.
17. Cross-referencing products for customers to convert to your brand.
18. Participating in select supply-partner online training.
19. Training other team members on a product or technology.
20. Training other team members on a better way to maneuver through the computer system.

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