The speed of your sales cycle is one of the most influential factors that can significantly affect the growth and success of your business. Although the actual cycle can be a very complicated process, a more simplified outline of the process can help you better understand how an efficient sales portal can speed up your sales cycle.
Your sales cycle begins with your customers selecting the merchandise they are interested in, progresses to the ordering stage, and eventually ends with you getting paid. Of course there are a variety of other elements that are involved, including but not limited to order processing, order fulfillment, inventory control and invoicing. In addition, sales reps are often tasked with answering pre-sales questions, such as availability and product specs, as well as post-sale inquiries regarding shipping and payment. Without an efficient sales portal that streamlines the order process, your sales cycle is destined to be filled with time consuming or repetitive tasks, inaccuracies in data entry and a variety of complications that will inevitably slow it down.
Wholesale Sales Portals Speed Up Your Sales Cycle
An effective sales portal is crucial for the efficiency of your sales cycle and includes the following components:
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Customer Portal: The customer portal gives your customers a professional ordering experience with "anytime" access to a variety of online tools in order to make doing business with you a breeze. Customers have access to real-time inventory and information about product availability, they can enter their orders online, and they can look up pending orders, order history, payment history and shipment tracking information without ever speaking with a sales or customer service representative. In the event that your customers do feel the need to call, your reps will have immediate access to the specific details in order to provide faster and more accurate assistance.
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Sales Representative Portal: Improve the efficiency of your sales and customer service representatives with the sales rep portal. Your reps will possess the ability to access all of the information they need with ease from anywhere with an internet connection. Since your sales team will be able to look up specific customer details and information about your products, place orders for customers online, check on stock and shipping information and even set up new customers, they will have the ability to answer questions and assist customers in a much more efficient manner. Improving the efficiency of your team not only provides your customers with a more pleasant experience, but it opens up time for your reps to build new sales and create stronger relationships with existing customers as well.
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Warehouse Integration: An efficient sales portal will integrate seamlessly with your warehouse which improves warehouse communication. Since effective communication is key in every aspect of a successful business, warehouse integration is essential. Additionally, warehouse integration eliminates the need for expensive and time consuming data entry, and it enables you to transmit orders to the warehouse electronically and view real-time shipment and tracking information.
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QuickBooks Integration: Perhaps the most influential characteristic of an efficient sales portal when it comes to increasing the speed of your sales cycle is integration. QuickBooks integration not only improves the accuracy of order processing and tracking by eliminating the need for manual data entry, but it makes the process much faster as well. When orders are placed on the portal, they are automatically created in QuickBooks. Since orders can be imported to QuickBooks as sales orders, invoices or even sales receipts, your team will no longer need to take the time to manually create various files, and they can spend their valuable time on more important tasks.
An effective sales portal is an essential tool for increasing the speed of your sales cycle. By eliminating the need for time consuming or repetitive manual data entry with the use of an automated sales portal, you will not only be able to avoid costly mistakes, but you will save your sales and customer service representatives valuable time that they can then spend demonstrating a much more efficient approach to assisting customers, building relationships with new clients or improving existing relationships.
