Selling the Web
Distributor salespeople need to push the benefits of the Internet
By Sara Procknow -- Industrial Distribution, 12/1/1998
It wasn't long ago that the advent of the cell phone and laptop forever changed the routine of the outside salesperson. Now, the Internet is attempting to do the same thing by taking sales automation to new heights. To the techno-naive, it's time to jump on the Internet bandwagon. It's amazing what the Web can do to rev up your sales drive.Take, for example, the salesperson who walks into a sales call with the trusty laptop in hand, connects to the World Wide Web, and gives personalized "tours'' of the distribution company's amazing and useful Web site. Instantly, orders can be checked, back-orders tracked and obsolete inventory found. You can even show the customer how to generate an e-mail to the warehouse to change quantities on an existing order. Think how impressed your customers would be.
Furthermore, you are now seen as a source of information to the customer on anything relating to technology, the Web and e-mail. Selling MRO supplies may have got you in the customer's door, but becoming a source of information will keep you there.
Just think about all the prospecting a salesperson can do by surfing the Internet. One distribution company I know sees the Internet as a gold mine -- finding potential customers, checking up on existing customers and seeing what the competition is doing. You can tell a lot about a company from its Web site -- from the products they manufacture to the industries they sell to. I often think of the Internet as the best, largest, most complete and up-to-date library open 24-hours a day, seven days a week.
Taking it one step further, and for a bit more personalization, this same distributor also uses the customer's Web site logo and copies it onto the cover of an integrated supply proposal. Most images from Web sites, unless copyrighted, can be copied by using your mouse to right-click on the image and selecting Save. You now have a copy of your customer's logo to use on proposals, orders and such. A little technology can go a long way.
What about the distributor whose Web site lacks any real customer orders or even visits? I hear time and again how most e-mails and orders off the Web are from outside the distributor's territory, much less from North America. Typical distributors can't handle these types of inquiries.
Do you wonder why your current customers aren't your biggest Web site visitors even though they should be? Ask yourself the following questions: Do your own customers know about your Web site and all it has to offer? Did they have any input in creating the site? Do you have useful or exclusive information on your Web site that current customers can use? Do you regularly visit your own company's Web site often enough so you can talk intelligently about it to customers? My guess is that very few distributor salespeople can answer yes to these questions. Maybe this is why orders for "ones and twos'' come from Sri Lanka and not from your best customers.
You have to train and educate customers on how to use your Web site, just like you have to train and educate them on how to use the products you sell. This may mean distributor salespeople first need a review of the Internet and the company's Web site.
Half to most of a typical salesperson's job is in educating the customer. What if, on one of the sales calls, the salesperson did a mini-educational session for the purchasing folks about the Internet, also showing them the benefits of ordering off the distributor's Web site?
I know you are probably thinking that your customers aren't "into the Web,'' but who better to bring them there?
Maybe, through a little education, distributor salespeople can lead their customers into the next century better prepared.
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