Post Link: Wholesale Distributors: Do I Need a CRM?

Wholesale Distributors: Do I Need a CRM?

"Well-intentioned CRM efforts that focus on internal processes and objectives have largelyfailed to serve the most important stakeholder: the customer.”

This provocative quote can be found in a Forrester report titled, Beyond CRM: ManageCustomer Experiences. Indeed, while Customer Relationship Management systems, or CRMs,have been adopted by businesses large and small, these systems place most of their focus onthe “Management” side of the equation––enabling sales teams to log and manage the leadprospecting and qualification process––rather than the “customer” side of cultivating long-termrelationships.

With that in mind, it’s easy to understand why many wholesalers are unsure whether or not toinvest in a CRM, or have doubts as to the ultimate return on their investment.

Let’s take a closer look at what customer relationship management really means for wholesaleand why another category of software––sales order management––may also have the exactCRM functionalities that wholesalers are looking for.

What Does CRM Mean for Wholesale?

So what does “Customer Relationship Management” really mean for wholesale businesses?

While sales teams in other B2B segments are often focused on finding and closing newbusiness, wholesale sales is about building an ongoing relationship with the customer.

Field sales reps seek to cultivate these relationships by educating retailers about new products,providing merchandising support, offering strategic insights to increase sell-through, andhelping to maintain optimal inventory levels in each store.

Ultimately, wholesalers do not need many of the heavyweight tracking features offered byCRMs like Salesforce. To borrow from a previous post on this topic, a CRM system allowsinside sales teams to carry out functions like:

Tracking where a new opportunity is in a long, complex sales cycle from opportunity creation●

to deal closing.Analyzing the interactions that have occurred between the sales team and the opportunity●

(website/email clicks, phone calls, etc.).Seeing the effectiveness of online marketing campaigns in securing new sales pipeline.●

Wholesalers and distributors, on the other hand, generally look to adopt CRM systems in orderto simply:

Manage customer contact information.●

Note customer interactions and give sales reps access to this data on the road.●

Compile sales reports for reps and managers to increase sales and make management●

decisions.

Thus, while CRMs may offer some of the functionality that wholesalers are looking for, they alsooffer many features that aren’t necessarily going to have a big impact in a wholesale context.

On the flip side, CRMs fail to offer many of the features that wholesalers do need. In ordernurture partnerships with retailers, wholesale brands require a system that allows their salesreps to not only track their interactions with buyers and manage customer contact information,but also:

Display their line of products in a compelling manner.●

Seamlessly write and submit orders for fulfillment.●

Push and pull information to/from their ERP.●

Gain offline access to easily digestible information like order history and customer-level sales●

performance reporting in the field.

What wholesalers ultimately need to empower sales teams and drive better customerinteractions is a platform that serves as a consolidation of all of these functions.

A Sales Order Management Software Solution with CRMFunctionality

Sales order management software, which combines mobile order writing, web ordermanagement, B2B eCommerce, and back office integration, is a solution that provides a muchmore holistic qualitative and quantitative view of the wholesaler-retailer relationship, pulling

together all the information that a sales rep needs to have about his or her customers in onecentral location.

Sales order management software can include the basic functionality that wholesalers wantfrom a traditional CRM, while also providing a way to easily write and receive orders digitally.On the customer relationship management side, sales order management software should offerfeatures like:

1. Customer Order History

Allowing reps to quickly reference a customer’s most ordered items, upsell based on past●

orders, and identify popular products to recommend across multiple buyers.

2. Customer Notes

Giving sales reps the ability to log their sales activities, and document, review, and share the●

information gathered during customer meetings in the field.Providing sales managers with a better understanding of how the sales process is going and●

allowing them to deliver immediate feedback to improve the sales process and enhance thesales team’s overall effectiveness.

3. Customer Sales Reporting

Allowing sales reps to quickly identify customer volume gaps, prioritize meetings and calls for●

the greatest business impact, analyze performance drivers for key insights, recognizeseasonality issues and respond proactively to address ordering gaps.

These features, along with a other key elements such as a digital catalog, customer lists/contactinformation, mobile order writing interface, and a seamless integration with an ERP systemcreates a truly complete picture of the customer relationship.

So, in answer to the "Do I need a CRM?" question, consider this:

With an integration between your back office systems and sales order management softwarethat provides sales reps with all the customer information they need in their mobile order writingdevice, is there really a need for a third system?Post originally located at: https://www.handshake.com/blog/do-i-need-a-crm-whol-sale-distribution/

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