If it’s one thing we hear from sales reps, it’s that they want to spend more time selling (and less time doing anything else). For those of you hitting the road, here are some wholesale selling tips we've collected over the years to keep you focused on selling as your #1 priority.
Make sure to review your customer’s information before you show up at your appointment so you can spend less time looking things up and more time building rapport. When you arrive, you should be fully aware of:
Coming to the table prepared not only means you’ll be able to better control the conversation, but it also shows respect for your customer’s time.
Having electronic access to your product line allows you to maximize your visit with a customer (and has a side benefit of making you look cool). Fumbling through a paper catalog or sifting through physical samples of your products is a time suck. Alternatively, zipping through your catalog with a few clicks and/or swipes is a much more efficient way of showing off your inventory. Not fully ready to ditch your samples? Some sales reps use a hybrid approach, where they bring product samples of new or popular items they want to show in person but rely on use of a digital catalog for the rest.
Going digital also means spending less time gathering, carrying (and potentially forgetting) your physical catalogs and samples. Digital catalogs are also a feature of sales order management platforms like Edistera.
Once you finish a sales visit, if you are building time in your already too busy day to send message, call in or email the order to your customer service team, or manually re-enter the order into your company’s back end system, you are wasting valuable time. Sales order management software like Edistera syncs directly from the field to your back office so you don’t need to waste your time re-doing what you already did.
Assuming you’d rather be selling to customers than driving, it’s in your best interest to be smart about the location of your sales calls. The closer, the better. Edistera’s journey plan makes it easy to manage and prioritise multiple destination points. If there’s a chance that your schedule might change throughout the day, make sure to book your highest value customers in the beginning of the day before the day escapes you.
Look, we had to say it. If you find yourself forgetting your customers’ names, showing up late to appointments, or just generally not being on your A-game, it might be time to get some sleep, exercise, drink tea - whatever you need to focus. The last thing you need is YOU being your biggest distraction to closing a sale. Have any tips that you use to make more time in your day to focus on selling? Let us know!