If your wholesale business utilizes sales reps to make sales, you have a model of business that other wholesalers don’t have to contend with. However, there are additional steps, considerations, and processes you need to manage and keep on top of in order to do business.
Let’s talk about sales rep ordering efficiency (or, rather, a lack thereof).
The old-school way of ordering looked a little like this.
Your rep is out in the field. They have a good idea of what you have in stock, but they have no idea that a second rep just pushed through a huge order. The first rep is closing a deal with their customer for a huge order of their own. They don’t bother to call the office to make sure you can fill it; they just call it in after the fact.
When that call finally goes through, everyone’s stomach drops.
Your first rep has to call back the customer (or maybe you do) to let them know you can’t hold up your end of the bargain.
Your customer is mad. They feel like their time and money have been wasted. They get a refund, but they’re done doing business with you.
If only your rep was able to check your stock in real-time.
Or it could go a little differently.
Solving problems before they happen:
Maybe that massive order from the second rep was wrong. Maybe you actually did have the ability to fulfill the order from your now-very-upset first rep’s customer.
The order was wrong because of the way it was entered. Your second rep knew the right numbers, but when they relayed the information over the phone, it was misheard. An extra zero got added to the end, or maybe two.
If only there had been a way for your second rep to enter the order directly — both orders would have gone through fine.
Maybe the errors that happen at your business aren’t of such a serious, business-losing magnitude. Maybe there are just minor issues with misheard items, item numbers, or emails to reps that didn’t get deciphered correctly.
Maybe your reps wish there was a faster way to manage and process the orders their customers make so that they could spend more time acquiring more customers.
There’s a third option: What if the customers could have made both orders online?
What if your reps hadn’t had to go meet these customers? What if they’d been able to focus on other, higher-value leads somewhere else?
Most customers may not want to do everything online, especially if this is their first time filling an order with you. They want to meet someone face to face, to shake hands, and get to know the company they’re about to work with.
This is understandable. But not everyone is like this. Some don’t need to do things the old-school way.
What if, in the scenarios above, one of those two customers made their order online and then called your office to talk things over a bit?
What if you didn’t have to pay a sales rep to travel halfway across the county for every third order? What if you could focus on the most significant potential new accounts and the most valuable potential sales?
A younger demographic is opening more and more businesses that are used to placing orders online.
They’re happy to meet with a sales rep if they have to, but just as often, they’re happy with a few emails back and forth to set up their online ordering process.
They may not want to see the rep whenever they order. They just want to do what they’re used to – go online, place an order, and have it arrive exactly as they ordered it.
Even as a wholesaler managing sales reps, you can take advantage of this well-established trend towards online ordering rather than placing all orders in person.
When it comes to sales rep ordering, efficiency Is critical
If you can keep your reps from having to deal with smaller, low-value orders and focus on the big fish, the critical deals, they win, which means you win. More business is never bad, and more business with less effort? What’s not to love?
And if, along the way, you have a system that doesn’t require you to communicate orders over the phone or via email, you cut down the potential for a miscommunication that results in lost business.
If you have a system that keeps your stock and orders updated in real time, one that your reps can access quickly and easily from the field, you can reduce lost sales.
Now, Commerce is that system—it makes you a lean, mean selling machine and allows your reps to churn out higher-quality business faster.
Sales reps don’t lose out on business—they still get the orders attributed to them thanks to their own sales portal within the system.
Customers have more flexibility, something that makes them happier. Your sales team sees more routine business come in and can dedicate time to increasing revenue in other ways.
They can still review orders, call customers to confirm details and upsell those customers where appropriate. Instead of haggling over an order the customer clearly already intended to make, the salesperson can focus on the upsell.
That’s not just convenient – that’s smart selling.
