Field sales reps have been losing a lot of time punching orders manually. Even the smartest of your sales reps are doing this robotic job of re-entering the order several times, while he/she is capable of using the human skills to build relationships with the customers, and help them understand your products better.
But, all they end up doing is visiting and writing down the order on a paper. The worst part here is that your customers decide the order on the basis of the catalogue you had printed weeks ago, which became mostly irrelevant right after it came out of the printer.
Printing catalogue takes time. You get the product-pictures clicked, content written, catalogue designed, and then comes the final printing. Further, the catalogue is explained to the sales reps and distributed to them for their voyages to the customers. You know how much time and money it all takes.
Overall, order processing becomes such a tedious task that one order takes a lot of your time and other resources. So, your field sales reps get too tired writing the orders, you spend a lot on their business travel, catalogues are always outdated, order processing takes days or weeks, you are left with very little time margin to choose a cheaper as well as better shipping option, and there is a laundry list of loss-making-opportunities when you stick to manual way of doing business.
Now, this is kind of an endless topic, where we can keep talking about the benefits. But, let’s stick to the main points that you must consider while thinking about choosing between manual and automatic.
Sales reps have the skill of selling things, to persuade people why they should buy your product. Manual way of taking orders reduces the benefits of these skills, as they have to invest more time in explaining the current situation of your stock versus catalogue. Further, they manually note the order on paper to write it down again and again for the next steps to be taken for fulfilling the order. Doesn’t it sound like a tiring task? We humans have a limited amount of energy on a daily basis. So, we need to choose smartly where to invest it. With the help of a B2B ordering app, either the customer can directly place the order or your sales rep can place the order for them; and this will be a one time effort for final order processing. Saved a lot of time, right?
We are humans, and we make mistakes. Your sales rep can also make mistakes while writing down the order manually. Several steps of writing down the same order has the possibility of modifying the details of the original order. But, once the order is placed in the field sales app, the order instantly gets synced in the system for your entire team to process the order faster. Hence, chances of human-error reduce to nil.
With the help of sales rep app, your sales reps don’t need to carry the printed catalogue everywhere. The app has the catalogue with high quality images and videos of your products, which is constantly updated as per the current status of your stock. Again, this saves a lot of time because it tells the exact situation of the availability of the stock. Also, saves a lot of time in explaining details to the customer. At times, your sales rep might not have entire information, product tutorials, etc. Sales rep app can keep your sales reps updated in real-time with all the required product information.
Modern B2B customers are a lot like B2C consumers. They want to be able to see your products first-hand and don’t have time to flip through cumbersome paper catalogs that are irrelevant the moment they’re printed. This applies to your in-person sales channel as well as your B2B ordering portal, if you have one (and you should).
Wondering what to do next? Talk to your sales reps. Get to the bottom of the issues they are facing and see if a field sales management software would help them out. Ask them: “If your order writing process was 50% shorter, how would you better use your time?” Then figure out how those process improvements would affect your business.
While you understand the benefits of the field sales software, convincing your sales reps can be difficult. Even the smallest of change can cause discomfort to your team, as it will somewhere disrupt the way you are functioning right now. That’s why we have got this blog for you: How B2B e-Commerce and Field Sales can work together
If you still have questions, please feel free to contact us.