56. Why You Need Enterprise Selling Metrics in Distribution

Index, Profit Analytics

Developing and using the right analytics is the most important step you can take towards exponentially growing your business. After all, you don’t know what you don’t know. The right metrics can reveal some astounding facts about your business. This is why you need Enterprise Selling Metrics in Distribution.

Mining the Value Hidden in Your Best Accounts

One CEO of a distribution chain started using WayPoint Analytics and discovered some very helpful facts about the business:

    • “Our top 100 most net-profitable accounts (out of 6200 total) yield 80% of our overall operating profit!”
    • “With WayPoint’s fifteen different deep-dive tools, we can see how we could save plenty on hidden, unnecessary buying and servicing activity costs.”

  • “We could – even without getting more share of the account, which will often happen – increase our profits another 50%.”

Of course, the next question was, “How do I get my sales reps to solve these problems so all parties, including them, win big!”

The Short Answer: He Can’t

The company presently pays reps on incentives to sell tangible products and tied to gross margin. This doesn’t incentivize the reps because:

  • They are not paid on the savings from finding and implementing improvements for unnecessary small orders, credits, customer-downtime costs, etc.
  • Reps might not be skilled (yet) at doing this kind of process tuning.
  • They are not calling on those who would value these solutions, such as the VP of Supply Chain.

To get your reps involved you will need new goals and incentives for each account, you will need to educate your reps on new processes, and you will need to find your VP of Supply Chain solutions champion.

The Longer Answer: Make Your Reps Key Members of the Enterprise Selling Process Team

With WayPoint’s line item profit analytics tools, you can:

  • Specifically identify the hidden, unnecessary activities that cost both parties the most
  • Both educate and negotiate with each customer using their own statistical buying information
  • Identify the team skills needed to execute my nine-step consultative process
  • Justify hiring special talent to go after a certain big return on investment
  • Decide on an account-by-account basis where the assigned rep can best assist
  • Adjust a rep’s compensation and goals for each account

The upside profit gains from improving both your super-winner and super-loser accounts will cover all forward investments and reward all good employees.

Start Measuring the Enterprise Selling Steps

For an annotated four-slide explanation on why you need Enterprise Selling Metrics in Distribution, including the Nine Steps and new supporting metrics, click here.

And, to get started come see my presentation called Measuring Everything That Matters at the Advanced Profit Innovation Conference (April 20-21 in Phoenix).