Bigger is Better!! (If you're in Sales, that is)

Like most things in life bigger is better. Take your wage for example. We all want more so we can buy newer bigger things and show the world that we work hard for what we have.

If you’re a Sales Manager, the only way you can get a bigger pay packet is to sell more stuff or sell the same stuff for more. That’s right I am talking about Margin. But you have 30 reps in 10 different locations making sales and you have little visibility of what they are doing day to day. Only at the end of month review can you see that they made targets by discounting products to the point that is it even worth selling the product.

I have seen this all too many times where the sales rep bringing in the highest gross value is not the best rep when it comes to margin.

Over the years of implementing and training people on how to use Phocas, I always get a kick out of training sales reps. You can usually tell when you start to show them around Phocas who is guilty of heavy discounting to achieve their sales target. They are the ones that are rubbing it in everyone else’s faces that they are on top for sales value for the year. And this continues all the way until you show that we can also look at margins with a simple click. Then Mr Look at Me becomes the quiet one. And you can see the smiles on all the other reps faces that now sit above Mr Look at Me.

At this point, I can tell some people don’t like me because I have exposed to everyone what they are up to and how well or not so well they are going. You can even see some thinking they may need to update the old resume. But that’s not what Phocas is about; it’s so much more than a way of exposing what reps are doing. If used by the reps, they can see the customers that are slowing in sales of any product, in any product line, the customers that have dropped off and even ones that have come back. That’s when the smart ones start using Phocas to improve sales and margins, the not so smart ones may resist at first but they will come around when they see how well those that use the system are doing.

With this new found information at their fingertips, the sales reps can now start plugging gaps in sales with a Top Selling list of products that their customers aren’t selling instead of discounting products that they area already buying. Or even better, why not start to push link-sell products. If the customers are buying hammer but not the nails, well then you are missing out on this add-on sale opportunity.