But, as a manager of a sales organization, what would you think if some of the salespeople reporting to you weren’t justifying their $700 share? Worse yet, what would you do if you discovered that some of those salespeople were calling on the exact same customers? Unless you have a peculiar fondness for throwing money away, you’d probably put an end to that practice pronto.

Yet that’s exactly what happens in the MRO supply channel every day. Manufacturers and distributors both maintain sales forces that call on end-user customers. Often, they call on identical customers. And in many cases, customers would prefer that no salespeople call on them because they don’t perceive any value in such calls. Yet the practice continues.

Reducing redundant sales forces is one of the key issues that the industry must address if it hopes to maintain its viability in the new millennium. One way to start the process would be if distributors and manufacturers were to rethink an age-old practice they’ve been following for as long as anyone can remember: the joint sales call.

Robert Nadeau of Industrial Performance Group, a Northfield, Ill., company that specializes in helping improve manufacturer and distributor communications and reduce manufacturer-distributor conflict, would like to put an end to the ignominius joint call.

He says there are only two reasons for doing joint calling: to train salespeople and to monitor progress.

“If distributors and manufacturers regularly call on customers together for any other reason, it’s redundant and wasteful,” he says.

Nadeau is one of the experts we spoke to for our story, “The art of the double team." We think it provides food for thought for progressive distributors to begin thinking of ways to reduce redundant sales costs.

Another way that distributors are reducing sales costs is through technology. In our story called, “e-commerce explosion,” Tonja Broadwell of Kelly Supply Company in Grand Island, Neb., talks about how select customers can access Kelly’s Web site to check stock availability, query order status, review invoices and other tasks. It has proved popular with a growing list of customers who like a do-it-yourself approach to customer service. And it saves Kelly money because it doesn’t tie up inside sales resources. That’s good news, because $700 in savings a day adds up quickly.