We’re not going to go around the bush and make you read the entire blog post to find out the answer. We’re going to say it right away – the reason your wholesale company must implement digital-first strategy is to survive.
There are several indicators that digital is gaining importance in the wholesale business and we’re going to mention the most important ones that will show you that time to jump on the digital bandwagon is running out.
Empowering Your Sales Reps To Be More Productive
There’s nothing more powerful that you can give your sales reps than actionable accurate information collected from your previous B2B sales and customer history. Especially, when it’s available on mobile and they can access it right there in their hand anytime and anywhere.
The abundance of client, industry and company information can immensely help them to upsell or cross-sell your company’s services and products.
That is just the benefit of a CRM as a tool, but there are other tech solutions that can drive their productivity. For example, a route-planning app will enable them to find the fastest and shortest way to the customer and spend optimum time with them in order to reach their target for the day. Digital catalog can be equally useful since it can easily become a marketing tool in your sales reps hands and it has a direct ordering option so there is a minimum waste of time and opportunity for mistakes. Not to mention the gamification that is becoming prevalent in the sales department, which motivates your sales reps to sell more by competing with their colleagues on the leaderboard and with that increases transparency in your organization.
All of this will inevitably result in more client visits and more product or services sold on a daily basis.
If your competition is empowering its sales reps with real-time data that helps them sell, you have no other choice but to follow suit or find an advanced sales solution to try and surpass them.
Having A 360 View Of A Customer Behavior
The days of a sales magic ball and trying to figure out how your clients feel and what is their next purchase is long gone. Those that still flock to a fortuneteller to find out this information are bound to fail.
EPRs, CRM and various advanced sales solutions all together can give you precise data that creates a clear outline of how your customer behaves, how often he buys, what he buys and how much he is willing to spend. You can even know what are their pain points and aspirations through direct conversation or social media, like LinkedIn, and input them into your CRM.
This data will help you create tailor-made offers for your customers, pinpoint the exact time when to propose a sale and give you the superpowers to act as a trusted advisor and industry expert that you are.
Catering To Your Customers
Customers are growing more demanding day by day and they don’t have the time to wait for your company to catch up with the latest trends. Millennials are slowly making the majority of the workforce and their habits include researching a product or a service before they buy it and having the answer and the product itself in the matter of hours or days. If you decide to ignore that – the market will ignore you.
If you are not e-commerce oriented, the least you should do is have a digital catalog of your products and an excellent sales rep that will always be there for your customer at the right time with the right information. Customers love being taken care of and the more of the expertise you show – the more customers you will keep on retainer.
Tech can advance all it wants, but customer relationships and human factors will always play an important role. However, nobody will put his or her trust into a sales rep that is lagging behind everybody else and they will quickly move to the ones that can deliver faster and better service.
The Biggest Players In The Industry Are Already Doing It
Your competition already has a digital-first strategy or, at least, they will have it soon. Wholesale brands are already looking into e-commerce solutions in order to enable buying directly from a manufacturer. Their sales reps are already running around with all the information they need in the palm of their hand. Their sales departments are using omnichannel sales solutions that help them share data and connect all the aspects of the sales process. This exact data enables them to improve old and develop new relationships with customers by giving out good advice and knowing the industry inside out.
Where do you see yourself in this entire narrative?
So if you need us to remind you once again why digital first is important, it’s to help your wholesale company survive in this day and age.
