Businesses are continually looking for ways to cut costs and increase sales. Finding creative ways to get more productivity out of your employees rather than hiring another person is a proven strategy. When you want to increase the productivity of your outside sales rep staff you can give them additional tools such as a sales portal. With sales rep software, you can drive up your reps’ performance and increase customer satisfaction in the process. Discover what a sales portal can do for your sales reps.
Minimize Administrative Tasks
A big part of a sales rep’s job is customer service. Researching answers to a customer’s questions can be time consuming and keep a rep from the important work of selling. These questions from reps also tie up your inside team. With instant access from anywhere, whether on a computer, tablet or smartphone, sales reps can easily:
- Enter customer orders
- Check individual customer pricing
- View shipment history
- View available inventory
- Obtain tracking information
- View payments and credit memos
Being able to provide answers quickly allows a sales rep to provide great service and to devote their time to selling your products instead of bothering your inside team and waiting for answers.
Speed Up Information Flow
One thing a sales rep never wants to do is keep a customer waiting. Whether it be for inventory availability, credit status, or any other reason, answering your customers’ questions immediately is a huge benefit to the customer service experience. With sales rep software, your reps have instant access to questions a customer needs.
Minimize Back Office Support
Besides taking up sales rep time, researching customer inquiries can also keep your back office busy and unable to focus on their jobs. With a sales rep portal, you eliminate the need for sales reps to call the office for customer information.
Sales rep software that integrates with QuickBooks allows your organization to eliminate duplicate order entry. This integration also minimizes errors.
Adapt to Current Inventory
With the portal synced to your company’s accounting system, sales reps will be able to see current inventory levels. Knowing how many units are in stock will help reps avoid placing an order that exceeds inventory levels.
Experienced reps that have access to inventory levels will be able to help your company manage its supply chain. They can adjust sales to meet your company’s inventory management needs. For instance, a rep might offer a specific customer a special discount on a product that your warehouse has too many units of. Another example, a rep might offer free expedited shipping if your warehouse needs to move products to make room for an incoming shipment. Having this knowledge will enable your reps to manage their accounts more efficiently.
Up-to-the-Minute Sales Performance
A good sales portal will allow reps to easily check their own sales performance. They will no longer need to ask you in the last week of the month how they are doing. They can see how they are performing with reports that show them their current and past sales by customer and by product. The continuous sync with QuickBooks gives them the by rep, by customer, and by item info they need.
Increase Customer Satisfaction
When sales reps are knowledgeable about their customer’s pricing, open orders, shipments, and credits, it boosts the confidence of their customers and in turn increases customer satisfaction. By having all of a customer’s information at their fingertips, sales reps are able to make good use of a customer call or meeting.
Give your sales reps the tool they need to maximize their productivity by taking full advantage of a sales rep software system. Let a sales portal streamline the selling process, free up your office staff and sales team’s time, and increase sales and customer satisfaction.
