No order number? No problem.

In today's market, distributors whose inside sellers can't answer application questions or make product recommendations will be pushed aside by the competition

By -- Industrial Distribution, 5/1/2000

Three years ago when Kelita Naab joined the inside sales team at Sonnet Supply-a cutting tool specialist just outside Los Angeles that caters mostly to the aerospace industry-she would frequently fill in order forms by hand and she spent a lot of time at the fax machine. And if a customer called in with sketchy information, she'd quickly turn the problem over to an outside salesperson.

All that has changed. Today, Sonnet Supply's inside salespeople are responsible for building relationships with customers and helping them select the right tool for their specific application, as well as for pricing items, checking stock and delivery, processing orders and purchasing.

Naab recalls one incoming call, typical of many, in which a customer needed a product but only had limited information to give Naab.

"But I sensed the urgency of his situation and immediately as I got off the phone with him, I started running with the little information that he gave me," Naab says.

A few hours later when Naab called the distraught customer back with the information he needed, she says, "he was shocked. He was impressed. And I was able to win a customer forever because I was able to help get him out of a bind when he needed help. I was able to take a little information and provide the customer with everything that he needed and more within a very small amount of time."

A new breed of inside sellers

Distributors whose inside salespeople are unable to answer product application questions, make product recommendations and even educate the customer, may be in danger of losing business to their competitors.

Inside salespeople at today's leading industrial distributorships are better trained, more knowledgeable and more empowered than ever before. The fast pace of business today demands that distributors provide customers with immediate, cost effective and well-informed service, and many distributors are discovering that building a quality inside sales team is the best way to meet those demands.

"The potential is for people to go beyond passive order taking to be customer advocate partners with the customer-to get to the point that they add so much value that they help to retain and expand that customer's business," says Karen Leland, a partner with Sterling Consulting Group and co-author, with Keith Bailey, of the book "Customer Service for Dummies."

Leland also sees potential for inside and outside sales departments to work together as a team to provide the customer with greater service.

"They've been very separate and segregated for a long time, and in some companies even adversarial," Leland says. "It's one of the places that [industrial distributors] could focus their attention and it would make a real difference, ultimately, in the quality of service the customer receives."

The right time for change

There are a number of factors contributing to the push for inside sales to add more value for the customer.

Linda Navarro, president/CEO of Sonnet Supply, says the heightened role that inside sales plays in her company is a response to changes brought on by Y2K, e-commerce, acquisitions, mergers and buyouts.

"As a small distributor, all of those changes have forced us to stay focused. We've focused on exclusive lines and our inside sales staff [members] are no longer just order takers or paper processors. They're specialists in those lines," Navarro says. "Years ago the inside people needed to know a little about everything. Now they have to know a lot about a few things. They go to training seminars on each of our exclusive lines so that they can be looked upon as a specialist by the customer."

Navarro has seen the evolution of inside sales firsthand-she held that position along with several others as she worked her way up in the organization over a period of 20 years before becoming president in 1997. When she worked inside sales, it was then referred to as working the "order board."

An effective inside seller can lead a customer through the process of finding the right tool for an application, allowing the outside salesperson to spend more face time with customers who need on-site help, Navarro says.

Today's customers have increasing sources of information available to them as well, which raises the stakes for distributors who want their inside sales staff to be more informed than the customer on the other end of the phone line.

"Customers have more avenues and more places they can go to purchase product-the Web, distributors, catalogs," Leland says. "And the Internet is giving a whole new opportunity for customers to purchase product direct. If you're going to have someone doing a sales role, they're really going to have to be adding value if the customer is going to buy through that person. Inside sales needs to be adding value to the buying process."

Fortunately for distributors, at the same time that the Internet and other advances in technology are providing more options for customers, those same advances are making it easier for inside salespeople. Inside sellers can quickly access detailed information, enabling them in many cases to provide immediate answers for customers who are often unwilling or unprepared to do the legwork themselves.

"The Internet has helped greatly because now I can be on the phone with a customer and I'm able to access the manufacturer on the Internet and service a customer with products I might not normally handle. It's wonderful," says Craig VanDerveer, a power transmission product specialist at K.J. Electric, a privately owned distributorship headquartered in upstate New York.

Turn your team into experts

Distributors looking to turn their inside sales team into a top-notch, customer service-oriented team won't be able to do it overnight.

Hiring the right people is the first step.

"I look for motivated self starters who are looking for a career," Navarro says. "Someone who can take the bull by the horns. This is a career. Whether they want that career to be inside or outside, they will be specialists."

Navarro is ideally looking to hire college-degree holders, but given the current high-stakes job market she is also willing to help committed new hires pay for their education. "We do promote education and we understand that situations come up where you're trying to juggle a family, a job and an education. We'll help you as long as the will is there," Navarro says.

For distributors who want to create an inside sales team of experts, Leland says it's important for management to make their commitment clear. They need to make sure the inside sellers understand that providing a high level of service to the customer is valuable to the company. She says it's also worthwhile for a company to measure and get feedback from customers on what their experience has been in dealing with the inside sales staff. That provides a starting point for improvements.

The next step is training.

Members of the inside sales team at K.J. Electric have been product specialists for many years, according to president/CEO Ken Jacobs, for whom education is the key to having high-quality, capable inside sellers.

"Inside sales is how I grew the company," Jacobs says. "My outside sales [staff] can make four to six calls a day, while my inside sales can make 20 to 30 calls a day. My advice to my outside salesmen has been you get the calls coming in, and I'll have the expertise in house. And that's really what we've done. ... I've always wanted to make sure my inside sales staff was as sharp as the person on the other end of the phone [was]. My inside sales staff is extremely knowledgeable. They're there to solve a problem. I don't want order takers."

Jacobs maintains a 2:1 ratio of inside to outside sellers and his inside sellers are cross-trained in all product categories but work in "quads" assigned to a specific product category like AC motors, power transmission, OEM products, etc. The entire staff meets after business hours on Monday nights for weekly product training led by staff sales engineers or by manufacturer representatives. They train on the products that K.J. Electric carries, as well as products carried by competitors.

Reward them well.

It's important for a distributor to set standards for service excellence for its inside sales staff, Leland says. Those standards should be measurable and objective, such as Always respond to an e-mail within 24 hours" or "Always answer the phone within three rings." Then, she says, it's important to set up both informal rewards, like recognition programs and thank you letters, and formal reward programs.

Jacobs rates the performance of his inside sales staff based on the orders they take and then rewards them with bonuses.

"It's incentive for them to be good," Jacobs says. "If they don't educate the customer, the customer's going to call for somebody else next time."

Inside sellers like Naab and VanDerveer are also motivated by customer feedback.

"My job is to get as much information as I can from the customer, and then let them know that I'll take care of everything," Naab says. "I have established my own clientele. I've treated my customers with respect and they know they're important to me. They trust me."

"I'm satisfied when a customer says to me this really helped. I appreciate everything you've done,'" VanDerveer says. "Then I know they're going to call me first before they go to my competitor. I want to be their first phone call instead of their second or third."

Reward your inside sales staff