Vecta’s Jayne Hill discusses the essential role of technology and of choosing the right solution to drive sales growth for merchants.
For the ever competitive merchant sector, gaining and maintaining the edge on business rivals remains a challenge. We know that the new web savvy, more demanding customer and an incessant drive to exploit every available sales opportunity all add fuel to the argument that merchants can’t afford a sales operation that falls short in its performance and productivity.
Recent polls suggest that over 80% of our buyers (including existing and future customers) do their research online for products or services, so although word of mouth still plays a role in decision-making, it’s now so much easier for customers to check out a wider range of information, whilst on the go. The stark reality is that buyers have almost instant access to detailed product and specification information plus the ability to check out the quality of your service, so enabling them to make pricing and service comparisons before contact is ever made.
So what technology solutions are available to help you stay ahead of the game?
Business Intelligence (BI): Data reporting and analysis
A broad set of applications and technologies used for gathering, storing, analysing and providing access to data to help a company make better business decisions.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM): Customer details and interactions
A management philosophy or solution that delivers a central point for storing customer company contact details and information, in turn assisting the management of customer and prospect interactions and customer relations.
Sales Intelligence (SI): Intelligent analytics, customer data, interactions and sales prompts
The collection, integration, analysis and timely display of sales figures and shows interactions, opportunities and customer/contact profiles. Helps to drive sales awareness and productivity, support business decisions, enhance relationships and highlights sales gaps and helps optimise business results.
Differentiating the benefits
Using sales analytics has typically delivered an average 22% increase in performance results, however in relative terms, the use of analytics within the merchants’ sales function is still in its infancy. Making the right technology choice to facilitate the analysis — and more importantly using the valuable data you already hold — can make a significant difference to overall organisational growth.
Similarly, new customer acquisition remains an essential part of business growth but research has proven that protecting and increasing spend from existing customers is by far the most profitable sale.
Experts tell us that customer spend potential is regularly left untapped — an interesting thought! Taking the scientific approach to exploiting opportunities with each customer offers the most cost-effective way to grow sales. Equally, it makes sense to ensure that every member of your sales operation, whether that’s on a Trade Counter or out on the road, is prompted of where spend potential exists.
So which option could be most suitable for your merchant business?
Business Intelligence (BI)
BI tools have value; they are best used to provide a broad spectrum view of various elements within an organisation, and are often used within financial and complex management reporting environments. BI can be very resource-heavy, and it’s often too complex or static to be effective in the fast moving merchant sales environment where data and reports produced require a detailed understanding of data manipulation.
Typically sales reporting, data extraction and manipulation fall to IT or Finance teams which can delay the process. It’s far more advantageous for an effective and efficient sales team to have autonomous and continuous access to a consistent flow of accurate information and customer intelligence, presented to them in an easy-to-use and easy to manipulate format.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
When in place, fully operational and used as intended, Customer Relationship Management is a useful tool for supporting central contact management and tracking communication and new opportunities with Customers or Prospects. However, CRM doesn’t routinely provide vital details of sales data or information relating to customer spend-patterns, link-sell opportunities, profitability or attrition.
Traditional CRM often means that sales people still have to look elsewhere to see a customers’ sales history and work out what they have or haven’t bought, add to that the struggles of user adoption — people need to see fast benefits of implementing technology. Ultimately, a stand-alone CRM solution simply doesn’t highlight opportunities to help retain and grow an existing customer base — and that has a direct bearing on sales performance.
However, the really big question is this: “Can you pinpoint which of your customers aren’t buying to their full potential?”
Sales Intelligence (SI)
Sales Intelligence is automated management, analysis and presentation of sales transactional data that empowers Management and front-line sales staff by providing the information they need in the format they need it, when they need it. Best suited to merchants or wholesalers typically serving a large number of customers with an extensive product catalogue, this technology is predominantly used in an environment where repeat selling and customer retention — and therefore a knowledgeable sales team — is vital.
SI utilises the valuable information that is generally hidden within the sales processing system, producing powerful intelligence relating to customer buying habits, preferences and trends. Within the competitive merchant and distributive business, it’s important that every member of the customer facing sales team can tap into the full customer picture to maximise every opportunity.
Adopting a scientific approach to sales and customer management makes a lot of sense. Using technology helps equip your team with insight and enhanced knowledge levels and enables marketing campaigns that are based on intelligence taken from your own sales data.
Builders’ merchants that have adopted sales technology find that they can really enhance the quality and content of sales conversations and relationships with customers, so strengthen sales and profitability but also deliver exceptional customer management and fast, effective customer decision making.
For more information on Vecta Sales Analytics and CRM, visit www.vecta.net.
