One of the most difficult aspects of order management for wholesalers has always been the management of sales reps.
Even when a rep is doing everything they’re supposed to do, even when they’re an impressive example of what a sales rep should be, the simple reality of order and inventory management has often been, at best, a barrier to efficient operation.
Here’s what it used to look like not so long ago
A sales rep is out in the field, working tirelessly to assemble a large customer order. The customer has questions — questions about inventory, questions about how much, precisely, they can purchase, questions about this, that, and the other, questions that the rep has prepared for and is answering without hesitation.
Then, the customer throws a curveball, and the rep has no choice but to call the home office and get the answer.
Now you’ve got a customer sitting around waiting on a rep, twiddling their thumbs. Maybe while your rep is busy on the phone, the customer will ring the competition just to see what they can offer.
The home office may be busy. Maybe the question is a little more complicated than it first seemed, and maybe the inventory levels that the rep thought they were dealing with have changed as the day progresses.
Maybe another larger order came through from a client with more clout. But, because the system doesn’t update until someone enters the data by hand, the sales rep out in the field (and the rep’s home office contact) has no idea that this larger order has gone through.
When your rep returns to the customer, who suddenly has a bargaining position based on the phone call to the competitor, the sales rep will end up making an offer that can’t be fulfilled.
Or maybe it’s worse—maybe the rep, the home office, and the customer are all in sync, only to find out that the warehouse doesn’t have the product they said it had because it’s a third-party warehouse that just emptied out of product for one of their other customers.
The folks back at the home office find out a few hours after the sales rep puts in the order for their customer. The warehouse and the home office are sorry, but your rep looks like an idiot, and maybe you end up personally apologizing to the customer…
Maybe you end up having to offer the customer a significant discount just to keep their business.
And maybe word of this gets out to other sales reps, who start getting antsy about some of their more significant customers.
All because inventory levels and pending orders weren’t up to date. Frustrating.
It doesn’t have to be this frustrating
Fortunately, wholesalers no longer have to struggle, as they once did, to manage the various communications between the home office, warehouse, sales reps, or any of the other myriad moving parts involved in any wholesale business.
And reps no longer have to feel like they’re out in the lurch — which means you can keep top talent around (and attract new talent as well).
It’s just a little disconcerting for a sales rep to have to rely on a home office to do something simple, like double-check inventory levels.
On the wholesaler’s end, there’s something frustrating about the constant support required, the constant back-and-forth, the constant checking, double-checking, and triple-checking of harried, nervous sales reps.
Not to mention data entry — there’s nothing quite as frustrating as sitting down and tallying all the man hours spent doing something as simple as entering orders into QuickBooks.
Well, maybe there is — staying late, night after night, to make sure all the orders are processed correctly is decidedly more frustrating.
But things don’t have to be this way anymore. With a quality piece of wholesale order management software, wholesalers can bypass many of these issues — and even reduce staffing levels, all while making reps happy and streamlining the order process for all parties involved.
Now Commerce solves all these problems and then some
Our customers have often been in the wholesaling business for many years. They understand precisely, to the dollar, how much they have to spend on repetitive tasks like data entry.
They understand, in a very personal way, the pain of having numbers entered incorrectly during that process.
They can understand, intuitively, the value of being able to offer their reps in the field real-time pricing and inventory data.
They can immediately see how this can help them reduce staff levels, errors, and the time it takes to move an order from its inception to fulfillment.
Now Commerce integrates with QuickBooks to provide all of this and more. When reps submit an order, it will be automatically created in QuickBooks without costly, repetitive data entry.
The potential for mistakes is massively reduced, the need to keep a small army of data entry clerks around is eliminated — and you no longer have to keep up with constant phone calls, emails, and faxes between all the parties involved.
It’s a game changer — and it’s one that has to really be seen to be believed.
