As a speaker at the recent Industrial Supply Association Product Show & Conference said, distributors often focus more on acquiring new customers than they do on retaining them.
But both are critical to sales success and ongoing profitability. How do you prepare your sales force to sell better, especially considering the ongoing shifts in the market and new sources of competition?
Here are five articles from the MDM Premium Archives on the topic of sales management:
How to Get Sales Reps to Do What You Want – The ultimate challenge: How can you get sales reps to buy into the strategy that you want to push? Usually the first step is not changing your incentive plan; first you need to understand the underlying problem. This article looks at where to start.
From Sales-Driven to Customer-Driven – To stay ahead of the market, this article argues that distributors should dig into what customers really want to build a strategy that will result in long-term profitability. Rather than be reactive to what customers tell salespeople, shift the company’s mindset to be proactive and get a better hold on what customers’ primary business drivers really are.
Align Selling Resources to the Market – Want to reduce costs without losing sales? This article provides three steps distributors can take to mitigate the effect of a smaller sales force on revenues. The article is timely, as many distributors continue to be reluctant to add employees.
How to Retain Top Sales Talent – Turnover of top talent continues to be a top concern for distributors across sectors. How can you keep the best at your company? The author of this article contends that it has nothing to do with money and everything to do with sound sales management practices.
Uncover Unexpected Cross-Selling Opportunities – What kind of information are you providing to salespeople in order to uncover ways to sell more to existing customers? This article examines how distributors can uncover those opportunities by thinking differently about segmentation.
Not a MDM Premium subscriber? Access the above articles and more from MDM’s archives by subscribing today.