In today’s world of social media, successful sales and marketing in manufacturing is a complex balancing act requiring more and more visibility to actual data. Real-time visibility to dealers, agents, and customers involved in your business has never been more important for maintaining successful pipelines and customer loyalty.
If you don’t have a bi-directional communication portal to every channel of your business, you’re missing the critical information you need to stay ahead of your competition. You may not have a sales portal to your business, but your competition does and they are listening. They are listening to your prospects, your reps, and your customers.
The good news is many manufacturers who have become lean on the production floor are learning that applying similar principles in sales and marketing can also lead to increased production. These manufacturers know nothing is more important to their sales than an accurate visual of what is happening in their channel right now.
These forward-thinking manufacturers are looking at their complex sales scenarios, including inside sales, field sales, direct sales, reseller networks and partner sales and noticing communication gaps, redundant data and slow movement. They understand two things very clearly. First, they recognize the impracticality of trying to make good decisions using countless spreadsheets on multiple desktops with no consolidation. Next, they understand that their sales models include people who are not their employees but rely on them for business performance and that giving these non-employees a method to communicate allows their companies to monitor and adjust their performance. Then they ask, “How can we view the whole sales process in real time to better run our business?” And the answer is a sales portal which helps improve management and forecasting in these areas:
- Account ownership
- Distributor management
- Order management
- Support management
- Pipeline visibility
- Quoting
- Closing
- Messaging
A sales portal can also bridge the gap to your back-end systems and create a seamless communication protocol that empowers everyone in the channel, employees and non-employees, while providing accurate real-time visibility in a secure manner that can help accelerate the sales process.
View the Edgewater Channel Portal in action.
What can you monitor with a sales portal?
- Real-time dashboards
- Heat maps across the entire territory showing high and low performers
- Inside, field and channel sales
- Security between users accessing quotes and orders
- 30/60/90 day forecasts
- New revenue
- Estimated close dates
- Quote requests
- Service requests
- Customer loyalty
- Announcements for tradeshows and product guidelines
With a portal you empower your sales force with the tools needed to succeed. Each user has a different security level and sees a custom dashboard. For example, a manufacturer’s rep can see how his or her overall pipeline is performing. The rep can see new leads, can adjust those leads and can notify you of constraints. As the manufacturer you can see the rep’s pipeline incorporated into yours, and you can help move sales along by knowing precisely where the rep is in the pipeline. You can also send discounts to your field reps immediately and see how those discounts perform real time.
With a sales portal you can allow all of your reps to have access to a common document library and collaborate via discussion groups where you can include future products, sales literature, competitive information and more.
To see what is happening right now means opening a sales portal, which is as easy as opening a dock door in the warehouse – once you build it. For help building your seamless sales portal, contact Edgewater Fullscope for a product demonstration.
Tagged: CRM, customer relationship management, dealer portal, partner portal
