Distributors spend a significant amount on their sales force and for good reason. It’s critical for success — your sales force represents your company to the customer, serves as your eyes & ears on the ground and serves as a lifeline to your customers. In the recent past, outside sales was the key component of most distributors’ sales force with large numbers of outside sales reps spending time traveling to visit customers in-person to sell and build relationships.

This basic approach to sales force design has changed significantly in recent years with inside sales, hybrid sales, and hunter/farmer models all gaining traction as ways for some distributors to increase sales with the same or lower costs.

Read Redwood Advisors’ full report covering distributors’ five imperatives here

Inside Sales

In recent years — as technologies like video conferencing and customer preferences for remote meetings — gain steam, many distributors have invested more significantly in their inside sales forces. Many distributors report less need to do in-person visits and have incorporated more virtual customer interactions. 

As remote touchpoints gain traction, inside sales reps have become an even more valuable tool for distributors to reach customers via phone, online video and email. Inside sales reps, who proactively reach out to and sell customers, differ from customer service reps, who largely react to inbound customer requests and inquiries. Inside sales reps can touch more accounts, cost less money and typically lead to less customer churn if the rep leaves the company.

Hybrid sales

With a high-quality inside sales team, distributors can explore a hybrid sales model for top accounts. Using a hybrid sales model, high-value accounts are assigned both an outside and inside sales rep to support them. This model combines the agility and flexibility of inside sales with the in-depth relationship-building provided by outside sales and can enable outside reps to serve more customers. 

This model does come with real challenges. Without consistent coordination at the account level, reps risk duplicating work, dropping customer requests and negatively impacting the customer experience. This can look like your outside sales reps conducting a visit on the same day as an inside sales rep calls the customer to check in. To avoid these pitfalls, hybrid sales teams need to be highly aligned on consistent sales processes and best practices.

Hunter-Farmer Model

Many distributors are also rethinking their model for landing and retaining customers by assigning each of these motions to distinct groups: landing to “hunter” reps and retaining to “farmer” reps. The hunter-farmer sales model offers several advantages. Hunter reps can focus on aggressively acquiring new business, tapping into fresh markets and expanding the customer base, while farmer reps cultivate long-term relationships with existing clients, ensure satisfaction and foster repeat business.

In this model, the hunter is responsible for securing new customers, focusing on closing deals and driving initial sales. These high-touch reps spend significant time building relationships with new accounts. After the account consistently purchases from the distributor, the hunter passes the account to a farmer rep. Farmers sustain the relationship, continue to sell and respond to any questions or concerns.

The most common way this model goes wrong is a poor handoff from the hunter to the farmer. This change can feel like a disruption to the customer and can lead to customer confusion and frustration, especially if they feel a lack of personal connection or understanding. Maintaining clear rules of the road for the reps themselves is also critical.

The Final Word

Key changes in the distribution space from new GTM models to advancing AI provide new ways to create value for customers while also creating new threats to traditional distributors. Based on in-depth interviews with over 25 distribution leaders, a survey of 100 respondents, and in-depth market research, we at RWA Advisors identified 5 imperatives distributors need to respond to for them to thrive and create more value in this high-potential but increasingly competitive market. Imperative No.1 is optimizing your salesforce.

Our full report provides an overview, implementation tips & tricks, and key quotes from distribution leaders on each imperative to give readers both insights and practically useful tips to put these imperatives into practice at your company. You can read the full report covering all five imperatives today at this link.