Top 3 Reasons to Invest in Sales Automation Software for Reps

If you’re a brand manufacturer, wholesaler or distributor with independent reps on your sales team, you may be deliberating whether to invest in sales automation software for your independent reps. They’re not your employees. They come and go. You pay them on a success-basis anyway. Doesn’t sound very worthwhile, right? Actually, it can be a sound investment with a big payoff.

Your business success hinges on the success of your independent sales representatives. Why not give them digital sales automation tools to help them work better for you and bring in more business? Especially if the software pays for itself by increasing the average deal size?

1) Sales reps should focus on sales, not admin stuff

Sales reps are your liaison – indeed your ambassadors − with your customers, the retailers. They are your eyes and ears in the field. Whether they are employed or independent, you want your sales reps to represent your brand professionally, know everything about the customer’s sales history and process orders quickly and efficiently with the use of mobile CRM system. They should not have to waste time during customer visits combing through paper catalogs to find the right product and filling out lengthy, error-prone order forms. Instead, they should be focusing on enhancing relationships with customers, educating them about new products, discussing present and future business – and selling. For that, they obviously need to be using a proper sales automation platform.

If they are more productive and successful selling your line versus other product lines they carry, you can be sure they’ll be much more motivated to drive your products to market than any other products in their bag.

2) Independent sales representatives as an integral part of your business

Not any solution will do. Sales automation should be cloud-based, making it easy to deploy when new reps join your company, and easy to deactivate when reps no longer represent your line. Furthermore, if it is SaaS-based, you only pay for those reps that actually use the software. The sales app should also be able to run on any mobile device, so that you don’t have to buy a new one or be concerned with app compatibility. Independent sales reps can continue to use the device of their choice.

Equipped with this kind of sales app on their mobile devices, especially if it integrates with your ERP, independent sales reps become a real part of your team. They are able to offer retailers the relevant cross-sell, upsell, and special promotional offers, which are proven to increase average order size by 10% and more.

3) Knowledge = power = better for business

A mobile sales rep app provides independent reps a full view of a customer’s sales history, such as which products were bought and when, their most popular items, and outstanding debt or customer service issues. You can even give your reps access to previous interactions with your other sales reps. All of this knowledge boosts efficiency during customer visits and fosters trust by assuring retailers that the left hand of your business knows exactly what the right hand is doing.

By having all the information they need at their fingertips, sales reps can close more deals per day, increasing your total sales volume.

The right mobile sales app can put you in full control of your sales operations. Sales reports and dashboards enable you to monitor the success of your sales campaigns, identify top and worst selling products, calculate sales rep commissions, uncover customer buying patterns, and more.

Invest or not to invest?

Your business success is dependent on the success of your independent sales representatives… it makes good business sense to evaluate the cost of a mobile sales app versus the uplift in sales it could provide your business. If your ROI analysis supports such an investment, give your independent reps the tools to accelerate sales and start reaping the rewards ASAP.

Invest in your independent sales reps and provide them with the proper sales force automation software that will help them succeed!