Progressive Distributor - Front and center

Front and center

Inside sales/customer service occupy the frontline in your battle to gain a competitive advantage.

by Rich Johnson

What role does Inside Sales/ Customer Service (IS/CS) play in today’s sales process? How does your company leverage existing relationships between IS/CS and the customer? Upper quartile performers understand the important role inside sales, customer service and counter personnel play. Customers depend upon inside sales personnel for information, product suggestions, substitutions, application expertise, new product information, new services, delivery information and promotional opportunities for cost savings.

IS/CS people take more than 80 percent of all orders. This means they’re in a better position to influence buying behavior than field salespeople. Many customers would give up their contact with field sales before giving up their relationship with inside sales and customer service personnel. This is the frontline in the battle for success.

Critical to success
Many companies do not fully understand the critical role IS/CS plays in the success formula for increased sales, market share growth and profitability. Why? Because most companies lack adequate measurement systems to determine the full scope of work and specific roles of the IS/CS service group. This leaves department managers in the dark when trying to determine departmental activity, direct contributions to success and individual productivity. These metrics are necessary to properly design productivity tactics and compensation plans.

Many companies also lack upgraded phone systems that determine the number of inbound calls taken daily by salespeople, or measure call abandonment, average time per call, transfers, voice mail and other metrics important to creating an effective IS/CS support strategy. However, even firms without these essential metrics often demand IS/CS to utilize suggestive selling and up-selling techniques on inbound calls. Additionally, many companies assign outbound call responsibility to IS/CS and some even create quotas for these calls.

Plus, some executives were sold on the idea that voice mail could improve IS/CS productivity and address the issue of peak time inbound call burden. Voice mail cannot enter orders or answer questions. It does, however, give the customer some options. Those options include: waiting for the return call, faxing the order or request, or calling a better organized and more efficient competitor. Voice mail cuts the customer off and inhibits building relationship equity. It can’t provide analysis and solutions to even the tiniest problem.

Let’s get real
IS/CS personnel are extremely busy. Some may field up to 100 calls and related tasks per day. As a result, most IS/CS personnel end calls as quickly as possible in order to take the next call in the queue.

These employees do more than just take orders. They handle requests for literature, quotes, expediting, log and enter claims and complaints, check inventory, and even field calls from outside sales personnel. On top of these demands, we expect these employees to apply suggestive selling techniques, up-sell and create a pleasant experience for the customer.

Some IS/CS personnel are better than most at using different selling techniques and creating customer relationship equity. It requires specific skills that depend upon product knowledge, probing communication skills, effective listening and training in both suggestive selling techniques and offering the customer options. However, even the best IS/CS people stop these practices when the inbound burden becomes too great because they can’t take the time to talk with the customer, explore options and identify needs and interests.

How to improve
Start slow by creating a pilot project. Select one or two of your best IS/CS people to test a systematic approach to increase productivity. Hire a replacement for your IS/CS people in the pilot project to handle all inbound traffic overflow to allow pilot personnel the chance to increase sales with suggestive selling techniques and proactive outbound follow-up calls.

Train pilot personnel in these areas:
• Up-selling techniques:
• Suggestive selling techniques
• Outcall training
• Product training
• Communication/questioning skills
• Needs satisfaction, including:
     1) Features and benefits training
     2) Value propositioning and value-added selling
     3) Promotional selling
     4) New product and new source introductory selling
     5) Service and warranty selling

Your pilot project results may surprise you. You may conclude that IS/CS can generate opportunistic sales and increase your share of customer spend. You may also see new business and increased market share because customers respond well to recommendations and suggestions.

Your success will depend on changing management’s existing mindset about the support necessary to allow for proactive selling. IS/CS cannot effect change on their own; it must be driven and supported by management. Appropriate staffing is a key component to handling inbound calls to allow time to employ proactive selling techniques. Management also must understand that call length will increase dramatically.

You also need adequate measurement systems to identify individual performance so you can recognize success and offer appropriate financial rewards. Evaluate existing processes and how they function, not only during the normal course of business, but especially during peak times when the phone rings off the hook. Determine if IS/CS personnel tend to get off the phone as quickly as possible. (Some uninformed distributors actually have inbound call quotas.) Do staffing levels and other demands prevent employees from having enough time for selling on inbound calls? You may need to conduct a technology audit to determine if your existing system can issue selling prompts for associated products and other product line suggestions. (E-mail rjohnson@ircg.com for a list of six key measurements that support proactive selling.)

The counter conundrum
Counter sales personnel deal with many of the same issues faced by IS/CS people. They typically juggle several responsibilities at the same time and are skilled at multi-tasking. It’s a challenge to simultaneously handle will-call customers at the counter, inbound phone calls and whining salespeople. More importantly, this counter conundrum puts customer retention and value at risk.

These questions can help you solve the counter conundrum:
• How do you staff the counter?
• How should you handle incoming calls?
• Should you develop a prioritization policy?
• Should you have a separate will-call counter?
• Should someone else handle inbound calls from field salespeople?

Distractions such as doughnuts, coffee or popcorn won’t overcome sub-par service standards at peak times. Nothing short of service excellence is acceptable today to retain customers and create competitive advantage.

Solutions to the counter conundrum must be based on branch operational metrics. Start by evaluating your branch data. Increasing counter staff may seem like the obvious solution, but that may do nothing more than increase costs without solving the problem. When you analyze metrics, you must diagnose and treat the real disease, not the symptoms.

Determine the pattern of peak times by day and week for counter sales, incoming calls, will-call and other specific counter responsibilities. Be sure to include transactions and line item order entry information by counter salespeople in your diagnosis. Faxes, e-mails, sales and profit trends, inactive and active account trends, average call time, call on hold time, call abandonment and the voice mail connection are all part of the situational analysis.

This analytical diagnosis should help you determine peak activity patterns and sales growth trends by segment, such as will-call, phone orders and walk-in trade. You can then more appropriately match staffing levels and scheduling to these patterns. This analysis should also help you determine overtime needs, track your success at new account development and customer retention.

Keeping track of transaction errors and when they occur also helps conquer the counter conundrum. Don’t lose focus on specific patterns with the biggest impact on direct customer service. These include: the average wait time at the counter during peak periods, average on-hold time for call-in customers and the percentage of call abandonment.

What do the sales trends tell you?

Lastly, don’t rely on metrics alone. Talk to your counter pros. You may learn they spend a large percentage of their time on activities that don’t directly impact customer service and increase sales, such as handling calls from field sales regarding prices, availability, order status and expediting.

After completing your diagnosis, you should have a clearer picture of the issues hindering the ability of your counter pros to maintain world-class service and continuous sales growth. This should lead to a strategic initiative to address critical constraints.

Solutions may include:
•Forwarding calls to other branches or personnel during peak periods
• An inbound prioritization schedule
• A separate procedure for handling will-call, fax and e-mail orders and field sales requests
• Separating will-call from counter sales
• Training
• Technology solutions to support field sales and customer demands

Conquering these conundrums is possible, but it takes hard work, analytical diagnosis and a commitment by executive management to address critical constraints and create the systems and processes that make world-class service one of your company’s core competencies. c

Eric “Rick” Johnson is a principal of Indian River Consulting Group, an experience-based firm specializing in distribution. Phone (321) 956-8617, e-mail rjohnson@ircg.com or visit www.ircg.com for more information.

Note: Some information and research for this article was provided by Peg Fisher & Associates. Now retired, Peg was an early pioneer in the field, paving the way on innovations in inside sales.