Servicing a "long tail" of customers with a large SKU range represents a huge challenge for sales reps in terms of investing time in the right areas. Imagine you're a sales rep working in the wine industry. You have hundreds of licensed premises in your territory and knowing who is best to call on and what to talk about, beyond your specials this month, is a massively difficult thing to figure out. In Australia, the average restaurant or licensed premise has 30 different alcohol sales reps calling every month, let alone all the other suppliers competing for their 'share of wallet'. Hundreds of sales people banging away at them... no wonder it is so difficult to get cut-though as a sale person!
Here is the outcome Larry the Digital Analyst delivers: You are the one and only sales person the owner looks forward to meeting every month because you provide value-adding insights and advice on how they can grow their business and improve profit! Larry can go go out and pull every menu on the internet from your clients competitors, analyse the meals on the menus and pricing (including food which you don't sell) and identify the fact that restaurants within a 10 minute drive in the same category have food prices averaging 12% more than your client. Your insight (the reason to meet) is that your customer could increase prices by 8% tomorrow without becoming uncompetitive. Larry can further provide insights about what types of wine (products you do sell) and at what prices could be adjusted to also improve sales and profit.
To read the full article, please visit: www.linkedin.com/pulse/proof-bots-can-save-your-sales-career-tony-j-hughes
