Managing product catalogs and price books for Sales Reps and Agencies

Sales reps and agencies have a daunting task in needing to sell multiple product lines from multiple manufacturers. A big headache for these reps is managing all their different product catalogs from multiple manufacturers, including constant price and model changes. Some reps may even say it's the most tedious and difficult part of their job.

What if there was a more straightforward system to manage all this information? What would it look like, what should it be able to do and what benefits would it provide?

What would it look like?

• It would be a fully computer based product catalog system that could be effectively managed and automatically updated for price and model changes. With the ease of creating .pdf files of any printed material, virtually every bit of product information created can be converted to an electronic file and added to such a system
• It would be online and available at all times
• It would be under the complete control of the rep or sales agency
• It would be completely secure, but updates would be easy to perform either manually or through data imports

What should it be able to do?

• Provide item numbers and descriptions
• Deliver different prices depending on the customer, the product or the quantity purchased.
• Allow for viewing images of products
• Have links to other information about products, such as information on a manufacturer's website
• Information in the online catalog should be able to be updated automatically. Also, updating should be able to done to an individual item or on a mass basis by allowing for complete replacement of all data for a group of products.
• Allow for the grouping of products into categories and sub-categories. Also, it should allow for products to be grouped into more than one category or sub-category.
  Ideally, it would be linked to a sales quote to order management system

What would the benefits be?

• The rep would have all products for all the companies he represents in one place
• Errors would be reduced as updates to information would be managed much more efficiently and effectively. The following errors would be greatly reduced:
• Basic pricing errors
• Price breaks at specific quantities would be not be missed
• Items on sale would be clearly visible and therefore, more easily promoted by the sales force
• Items no longer active would no longer appear in the online catalog
• Dramatically less time spent juggling catalog information. Products would be easy to find.
• It would be much easier for manufacturers and reps to have their product information match exactly

Software tools are available now (or soon will be) that can do all of these things. It will develop rapidly and it's because the technology to easily store data, link to data and simply leave information in an available area on the internet where others can find it is so prevalent. All one needs is an internet connection. Another big development is the rise in use of hosted software, where users can just rent specialty software on a monthly basis and use it right over the internet, instead of having to buy and maintain the software themselves. That is how I see this arena developing and it's going to lead to a dynamic and fast moving future as even the little guy will be able to have the same software horsepower as his much more established big company rivals.

Smart tools are there for those who recognize their value. If you are a sales rep or independent sales agency and want to learn more about what the future will bring regarding hosted sales tools, please visit my website at www.RepQuotes.com.

SALES FORCE AUTOMATION TOOLS DESIGNED FOR REPS AND AGENCIES ARE COMING

In the past 20 years software and hardware development have improved enough to make once expensive and high maintenance software available to smaller companies. One of the ways it is delivered is through online hosting services. With the coming of cell phones and laptops, hosted services have bridged the communication gap to allow the road warrior to work anywhere, from abroad to the office. Now, with the internet, reps can access their data from any location without the overhead and headache of maintaining their own systems or remote connection software. It’s a different world where high powered sales force automation software is available to users at every level of functional need and price point. How does that affect reps and agencies in their day to day activities? Let’s make a wish list for a sales force automation system that would satisfy a rep’s needs and let’s see if it’s reasonable to expect that a hosted system could deliver that at an acceptable cost.

Judging from my past experience as a CFO for manufacturing companies, reps and agencies have a demonstrated need for:

· A way to complete all sales quoting activity in one fell swoop and hand it or email it to the customer and the principal. No need to finish the last 5% of work “at the office”
· Having all their information in one place, catalogs, products, customers, quotes and orders
· Having a way to just get on to the next sale, knowing everything has been done
· Spending as little time as possible on paperwork
· Having tools that help them to keep from making mistakes
· Professional looking quote and order forms bearing the rep’s name and logo
· 24/7 access to the information
· Having an easy way to update and resend quotes
· Having a way to track “whose court the ball is in”, customer, rep or principal
· Having history on everything ever done with a customer

Benefits of having a system that could do all this would be improved communication with principals and customers, streamlined sales processes, getting a clear view of the sales pipeline and gaining a competitive advantage over reps still doing things the old way. Finally, you’d own all the information in it forever; it would not be in the control of a principal. In fact, it could also help in securing desirable lines of product since you could demonstrate success in your markets and show that you can efficiently and effectively serve just the kind of customers that principals are looking for. Side benefits are that you don’t have to buy or install any software and system upgrades and improvements are all handled by the software provider.

My point is, in order to fulfill all of this, you’d need the kind of system sophisticated manufacturers have, but it’s clearly within the realm of possibility to expect that systems like this can and will exist at a reasonable price point for reps and agencies, especially given the relative ease it takes to do the necessary program modifications. No need to reinvent the wheel, just give reps a hosted location to work from and modify the interface appropriately.

Hosted systems are the wave of the future and ones that satisfy unique needs at a reasonable price are here today or are just around the corner. When researching systems you should expect a reasonable subscription fee, a free trial period so you can test it, discounts or lower fees for multiple users and a discount, or extra months free, if you pay for a year upfront. Expect the interface to be reasonably intuitive and the training will probably be a web-based tutorial or possibly in a webinar format. Basic reports will likely come as part of the package, but custom reporting, and data import services may cost extra. For more sophisticated users, look for systems that allow you to export your data into a spreadsheet format that you can download onto your computer. This puts the transaction data directly in your hands and allows you to analyze your own data or create your own custom reports.


Tony McConn, CPA is President and co-founder of TrueSales Corporation and developer of www.RepQuotes.com, a quote-to-order management tool specifically designed for the needs of independent reps and agencies. He has also been an ERP system implementation consultant and a CFO for manufacturers in a variety of industries. You can reach him at 425-485-0331 x102 or at tmcconn@wrighttools.com.

Sales Force Automation is coming for Reps and Agencies

Software tools that help reps and agencies do their job more efficiently and effectively have been few and far between and sales force automation software is not tailored to the needs of reps and agencies, but advances in technology and increased acceptance of “renting” software on hosted websites is starting to crack open the floodgates of inexpensive but sophisticated systems that are just beginning to be make it to long underserved markets. What has changed? Consider that for nearly 2 decades manufacturers have had the use of highly sophisticated and expensive customer relationship management (CRM) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. Tools with lots of horsepower and, if properly implemented, they deliver cost saving efficiencies. Eventually, developers of this kind of software figured out that there was a profitable market to be served by breaking off just the CRM piece of their programs, simplifying the front end and limiting options, stripping it down, so to speak. They then “hosted” the software on the internet where anyone could subscribe to it and gain access 24/7. They could also offer it at a fraction of the cost of systems they sold to manufacturers because:

1. They had already developed the software. Stripping it down was a piece of cake in the whole scheme of things.
   
2. Individual users were not going to put nearly the stress on the system as some of their bigger, highly complex customers. Developers were targeting users who wanted a basic version of their program.
3. They controlled the environment on which the program ran. Who better to manage the day-to-day control and maintenance of a program than the people who actually wrote it? Privacy of data among users and system security was strictly maintained and monitored closely. Also, with the advent of very large hard drives, the space needed to house tens of thousands of users was less and less of an issue. Finally, the concept of “server farms” had taken hold. These are companies that totally devote themselves to maintaining hundreds of web servers and guarantee minimal downtime, so software developers took advantage of outsourcing that function.

So there you have it. A different world where high powered sales force automation software is available to users at every level of functional need and price point. How does that affect reps and agencies in their day to day activities? Let’s make a wish list for a sales force automation system that would satisfy a rep’s needs and let’s see if it’s reasonable to expect that a hosted system could give you that at an acceptable cost.

Judging from my past experience as a CFO for manufacturing companies, reps and agencies have a demonstrated need for:

• A way to complete all sales quoting activity in one fell swoop and hand it or email it to the customer and the principal. No need to finish the last 5% of work “at the office”
  
• Having all their information in one place, catalogs, products, customers, quotes and orders
  
• Having a way to just get on to the next sale, knowing everything has been done
  
• Spending as little time as possible spent on paperwork
  
• Having tools that help them to keep from making mistakes
  
• Professional looking quote and order forms bearing the rep’s name and logo
  
• 24/7 access to the information
  
• Having an easy way to update and resend quotes
  
• Having a way to track “whose court the ball is in”, customer, rep or principal
  
• Having history on everything ever done with a customer
  

Benefits of having a system that could do all this would be improved communication with principals and customers, streamlined sales process, getting a clear view of the sales pipeline and gaining a competitive advantage over reps still doing things the old way. Finally, you’d own all the information in it forever; it would not be in the control of a principal. In fact, it could also help in securing desirable lines of product since you could demonstrate success in your markets and show that you can efficiently and effectively serve just the kind of customers that principals are looking for.

My point is, in order to fulfill all of this, you’d need the kind of system sophisticated manufacturers have, but it’s clearly within the realm of possibility to expect that systems like this can and will exist at a reasonable price point for reps and agencies, especially given the relative ease it takes to do the necessary program modifications. No need to reinvent the wheel, just give reps a hosted location to work from and modify the interface appropriately. A perfect example of this model is Salesforce.com.

Hosted systems are the wave of the future and ones that satisfy unique needs at a reasonable price are here today or are just around the corner. When researching systems you should expect a reasonable subscription fee ($50-$100 month), a free trial period so you can test it, discounts for multiple users and a discount or extra months free if you pay for a year upfront. Expect the interface to be reasonably intuitive and the training to be done over the internet. Certain reports will come as part of the package, but custom reporting, and data import services will cost extra. For more sophisticated users, look for systems that allow you to export your data into a spreadsheet format and deliver it to you. This puts the transaction data directly in your hands and allows you to create your own reports.

Tony McConn, CPA is President and co-founder of TrueSales Corporation of Everett, WA, a quote-to-order management and configurator software solution provider for manufacturers selling complex products. He has also been an ERP system implementation consultant for Catalyst Corporation and a CFO for manufacturers in a variety of industries. You can reach him at tmcconn@wrighttools.com

Quick explanation of our products and customers

www.RepQuotes.com is a sales tools that manufacturer's reps and/or agencies (reps) use to create and manage Sales Quotes and Orders for prospects and customers.

If you're wondering, a rep is an agent who facilitates the sale of a product between a buyer and a seller. A familiar example of a profession that operates in a similar manner is a real estate agent. They don't own the property they are selling, they are acting as an agent for the seller and they are paid a commission on the sale at an agreed upon percentage. Reps work the same way. They are not a party to the transaction and they don't invoice the customer.

Reps are asked by their prinicipals (the manufacturer of the product) to provide quotes to prospects and customers and once the details of the quote are ironed out, often requiring multiple revisions to the original quote it is accepted as an order by the principal. Easy in concept, but a difficult and tedious task for the rep as the principal does not typically provide quote management tools to the rep to execute the transaction.

Enter www.RepQuotes.com. A quote management tool where, if you're a rep, lets you:

1. Enter all your prospect and customer information
2. Enter all your line card information and pricing
3. Have custom price books for your prospects and customers
4. Generate and manage all your quotes, orders and templates
5. Attach relevant documents to prospects, customers and quotes
6. Get to it from any computer connected to the internet at any time
7. Get all the reporting you could ever want
8. Own the information in it forever and use it to gain a competitive edge on other reps and attract other product lines because you can demonstrate success in your markets and show that you can efficiently and effectively serve just the kind of customers that the Principal is looking for
9. Get started with it almost immediately at a low, low monthly price

www.RepQuotes.com is the tool for reps and agencies that solidifies communication, order administration and sales execution.

Sales Tools for Sales Reps

Let’s say you, a manufacturers rep or an agency, and a manufacturer are in the process of deciding to work together. Eventually you get down to the brass tacks of how to submit customer order information to them. What if the manufacturer told you “If you have access to the internet, it’s easy, and not only will it give us the information we need to manufacture the order, it also helps you manage the order starting at the “Opportunity” stage because it’s an online quoting tool that will generate a quote you can give to your prospect. We’ll set you up with a user name and password and you can submit the order information to us online. We have a screen that let’s you add all the prospect’s information, including multiple contacts and even attach documents electronically such as drawings, emails, spreadsheets, etc. Enter as much or as little as needed. From there, you can actually create a quote to give to the prospect because this system actually helps you manage and execute the entire quote process. It has our latest product catalog, with thumbnail pictures of items and links to additional information. On the quote screen there’s a price field that you can adjust as needed, but we also have custom pricebooks that you can assign a prospect to that automatically generates the appropriate price.”

“From there you can print or email a “Quick Quote”, which looks like a typical Customer Order except it says Quote at the top and has an identifying quote number. As you’d expect, it includes a top section with your agency’s letterhead information and logo and the customer’s bill to and optional ship to information. There’s a quote date, a quote expiration date and an acceptance line for the prospect to sign. If you need more than a Quick Quote, the other options are to generate a “Proposal Letter” or a “Formal Quote”. The Proposal Letter is a document with your agency information at the top and an open section where a text message can be added drawn from the External Notes section of the system. The “Formal Quote” has the “Quick Quote” information in it, but includes a preceding “Proposal Letter” and a concluding “Terms and Conditions” section. That’s good, but to make it even more flexible we allow you to add informational free form text in key areas in the Quote, including below each line, so that it’s clear to everyone what’s being quoted. These can be visible to the prospect when they receive the Quote or hidden from view. It’s your choice. These are commonly referred to as Internal and External Notes.”

“A big benefit of this system is that because you’re capturing all this information up front, once the Quote is accepted by the customer, we can easily convert the Quote into an order in our back-end manufacturing system. By using this system, it’s building a warehouse of information we can both use to better respond to sales opportunities. We end up with a database full of past quote, order, prospect and customer information that we can use as templates for future quotes and orders. We can generate reports on any of the data we’ve collected and we’ll both have visibility into our sales pipeline. We won’t need to call you to ask what’s going on in your territory because we can just call up the pipeline report to tell us that. It even has Win/Loss information fields available so that Quotes that don’t result in sales can be commented on and analyzed and close ratios can be tracked. Do you want to know more?”

You’re hooked, so you say “Yes.”

“There’s another aspect of the system. It has a unique tool that allows you to manage the prospect from the “Raw Lead” stage all the way to a completed order. To our way of thinking this is what we always hoped a Contact Management or CRM system would be able to do, but can’t because it can’t process transactions because it doesn’t have product catalogs or price book capabilities. Our tool is called the “Quote to Order Pipeline” and you use it to promote the prospect through the system by clicking on the appropriate box in the Quote to Order Pipeline section of the Quote. The Quote/Prospect can start at the “Opportunity” level and this is what a qualified lead could be entered as. You don’t have to immediately add detailed line information at this time, but you’ve established a “holding place” for the prospect. This information is now available for follow up and reporting purposes. As you start working with the prospect, you can add internal notes to the Quote that document any contact or discussions you have with them and any follow-up tasks that need to be done. CRM systems typically won’t let you manage a Quote transaction because they’re simply not transaction management systems. Because as I said, they don’t have the product catalog or price book functions built in. We’re very pleased with this system and we know that it’s made us more profitable by streamlining our processes and cut down on the number of order errors we get from the field. We’ve also set a goal for ourselves of being the easiest company for any of our Reps to do business with, and this is a big step towards doing that. We hope that by having state-of-the-art systems, our Reps wake up every day wanting to sell our products more than any other that they carry. We pride ourselves in giving you the best tools to do your job. In this case, these tools don’t just help you, but everyone involved in the sales chain. We think you’ll like it for a lot of reasons and we’re happy to offer it to you.”

“Finally, because we want you to use this system in a way that works best for your agency, we’re going to let you add to it. We want you to use it for all your other prospects and customers and all the catalog information from all the other lines you represent so that you can combine all your products together in one system and generate single Quotes to prospects that include all your products. You’ll also be able to create custom output reports so that you can split the order out to the different manufacturers you represent. Security in this system is solid and you can assign different levels of access to everyone in your agency. They only see what you want them to see and that’s applicable to Prospects/Customers, Product Catalogs, Pricebooks, Quotes and Orders. The system also has commission calculating capabilities so you’ll be able to get a download of that for entry into your accounting or commission tracking system”

You pause because this sounded great up until this point. You’re wary about putting all your proprietary information into somebody else’s system and that just killed your interest. Prospect/Customer and product information from other manufacturers is too valuable to put in the hands of another manufacturer. If you did do it, and your relationship ended with that manufacturer, how would you get all of your data back? Too bad, because that sounds like a really slick system and something that could really ramp up the efficiency of your agency by making quoting more seamless and streamlined. You could say goodbye to doing quotes on spreadsheets and word processing programs. It would make forecasting for your manufacturers almost automatic and it would give you an edge in representing other lines of product because you could show that you were a responsive Rep who could generate Quotes to customers efficiently and quickly as long as you had an internet connection available. Arrgh. Nothing’s easy!

You pause again..

What if….?

What if instead of the manufacturer “owning“ this system, you could “own” it?

What if there was a system out there that you, as an agency, could buy, or better yet, have hosted for you so you don’t have to buy the software, that could do substantially all of the things that the manufacturer mentioned?

A hosted system where you could:

• enter all your prospect and customer information
• enter all your line card information and prices
• have custom price books for your prospects and customers
• generate and manage all your quotes, orders and templates
• get to it from any internet connected computer at any time
• get all the reporting in all areas you could ever want
• own the information in it forever and use it to gain a competitive edge on other reps and attract other lines of products because you can demonstrate success in your markets and that you can efficiently and effectively serve the customers that the manufacturer is looking for
• get started with it almost immediately at a low, low monthly price
  

There is such a system and it’s called http://www.repquotes.com/. It’s available today and was developed to focus EXCLUSIVELY on the unique needs of Manufacturer’s Reps and Agencies

“Unlike other online Quoting Tools, RepQuotes is first and foremost focused on the needs of the Manufacturer’s Rep. The Rep is our customer and we serve him by solving his problems in dealing with customers, quotes and representing multiple manufacturers and product lines. We give the Rep an online home, “owned” by the Rep, where he can manage customers, products, catalogs, quotes and orders. It's his forever. RepQuotes.com is tailored so we deliver exactly what satisfies the Rep in the Quote-to-Order management process, understanding that in order to do that we must give the Rep exactly what he needs in order to satisfy the needs of the customer AND the manufacturer.”

Tony Mcconn
President
TrueSales Corpoation

RepQuotes is a hosted Sales Force Automation (SFA) tool powered by WrightTools (www.wrighttools.com), an enterprise level front-end solution for ERP systems and is a sophisticated quote to order management system and product configuration tool developed for manufacturing and service entities. TrueSales Corporation leverages 15 years of experience gained in deploying WrightTools systems and utilizes the eTransact capabilities of that system to bring www.RepQuotes.com to market, the unique hosted sales force automation solution focusing on the quote management needs of Manufacterer’s Reps and Agencies.

We are Sales Force Automation

Sales Force Automation is the best way to define the space that www.RepQuotes.com and www.wrighttools.com/hostedsq.asp (Hosted SmartQuote) occupy.

From Wikipedia Sales Force Automation is described as follows:

Proponents claim that sales force automation systems can improve the productivity of sales personnel. Here are some examples:

• Rather than write-out sales orders, reports, activity reports, and/or call sheets, sales people can fill-in prepared e-forms. This saves time.
• Rather than printing out reports and taking them to the sales manager, sales people can use the company intranet to transmit the information. This saves time.
• Rather than waiting for paper based product inventory data, sales prospect lists, and sales support information, they will have access to the information when they need it. This could be useful in the field when answering prospects’ questions and objections.
• The additional tools could help improve sales staff morale if they reduce the amount of record keeping and/or increase the rate of closing. This could contribute to a virtuous spiral of beneficial and cumulative effects.
• These sales force systems can be used as an effective and efficient training device. They provide sales staff with product information and sales technique training without them having to waste time at seminars.
• Better communication and co-operation between sales personnel facilitates successful team selling.
• More and better qualified sales leads could be automatically generated by the software.
• This technology increases the sales person’s ratio of selling time to non-selling time. Non-selling time includes activities like report writing, travel time, internal meetings, training, and seminars.

Advantages to the sales manager
Sales force automation systems can also affect sales management. Here are some examples:

1. The sales manager, rather than gathering all the call sheets from various sales people and tabulating the results, will have the results automatically presented in easy to understand tables, charts, or graphs. This saves time for the manager.
2. Activity reports, information requests, orders booked, and other sales information will be sent to the sales manager more frequently, allowing him/her to respond more directly with advice, product in-stock verifications, and price discount authorizations. This gives management more hands-on control of the sales process if they wish to use it.
3. The sales manager can configure the system so as to automatically analyze the information using sophisticated statistical techniques, and present the results in a user-friendly way. This gives the sales manager information that is more useful in :

• Providing current and useful sales support materials to their sales staff
  

• Providing marketing research data : demographic, psychographic,
  behavioural, product acceptance, product problems, detecting trends

• Providing market research data : industry dynamics, new
  competitors, new products from competitors, new promotional campaigns from competitors, macro-environmental scanning, detecting trends
  

Co-ordinate with other parts of the firm, particularly marketing, production, and finance

Identifying your most profitable customers, and your problem customers

Tracking the productivity of their sales force by combining a number of performance measures such as : revenue per sales person, revenue per territory, margin by product category, margin by customer segment, margin by customer, number of calls per day, time spent per contact, revenue per call, cost per call, entertainment cost per call, ratio of orders to calls, revenue as a percentage of sales quota, number of new customers per period, number of lost customers per period, cost of customer acquisition as a percentage of expected lifetime value of customer, percentage of goods returned, number of customer complaints, and number of overdue accounts. More complex models like the PAIRS model (by Parasuraman and Day) and the Call Plan model (by Lodish) can also be used.

Advantages to the marketing manager
It is also claimed to be useful for the marketing manager. It gives the marketing manager information that is useful in :

• Understanding the economic structure of your industry
• Identifying segments within your market
• Identifying your target market
• Identifying your best customers
• Doing marketing research to develop profiles (demographic, psychographic, and behavioral) of your core customers
• Understanding your competitors and their products
• Developing new products
• Establishing environmental scanning mechanisms to detect opportunities and threats
• Understanding your company's strengths and weaknesses
• Auditing your customers' experience of your brand in full
• Developing marketing strategies for each of your products using the marketing mix variables of price, product, distribution, and promotion
• Coordinating the sales function with other parts of the promotional mix (such as advertising, sales promotion, public relations, and publicity)
• Creating a sustainable competitive advantage
• Understanding where you want your brands to be in the future, and providing an empirical basis for writing marketing plans on a regular basis to help you get there
• Providing input into feedback systems to help you monitor and adjust the process
  

Strategic advantages
Sales force automation systems can also create competitive advantage. Here are some examples:

• As mentioned above, productivity will increase. Sales staff will use their time more efficiently and more effectively. The sales manager will also become more efficient and more effective.(see above) This increased productivity can create a competitive advantage in three ways: it can reduce costs, it can increase sales revenue, and it can increase market share.
• Field sales staff will send their information more frequently. Typically information will be sent to management after every sales call (rather than once a week). This provides management with current information, information that they will be able to use while it is still valuable. Management response time will be greatly reduced. The company will become more alert and more agile.
• These systems could increase customer satisfaction if they are used with wisdom. If the information obtained and analyzed with the system is used to create a product that matches or exceeds customer expectations, and the sales staff use the system to service customers more expertly and diligently, then customers should be satisfied with the company. This will provide a competitive advantage because customer satisfaction leads to increased customer loyalty, reduced customer acquisition costs, reduced price elasticity of demand, and increased profit margins.
  
  

Disadvantages
Detractors claim that sales force management systems are:

• difficult to work with
• require additional work inputting data
• dehumanize a process that should be personal
• require continuous maintenance, information updating, and system upgrading
• costly
• difficult to integrate with other management information systems
  
  

Encouraging use
For all the reasons stated above many organisations have found it difficult to persuade sales people to enter data into the system. For this reason many have questioned the value of the investment. Recent developments have embedded sales process systems that give something back to the seller within the SFA screens. Because these systems help the sales person plan and structure their selling in the most effective way they give a reason to use the SFA.

All of this describes what www.RepQuotes.com and www.HostedSQ.com bring to the Sales Force Automation equation. Both are transaction focused and bridge the gap between CRM and back-end systems.

Read all about it

The first ad for www.RepQuotes.com hit the streets today in Agency Sales Magazine.