The best sales rep software will help your in-house sales reps achieve their goals, stay organized, maintain better long-term relationships with your customers, and more. The right solution for your business will offer features that reflect the role of your brand representatives and enhance the prospecting and sales experience overall.
Read on to learn how the best solutions resolve common challenges for sales reps, what to look for in sales rep software, and how to help sales reps and buyers succeed.
Common challenges for sales reps (and their software solutions)
There are a few challenges affecting sales reps on a universal basis, no matter your industry or goods. Let the latest and greatest in tech help you solve them.
Challenge: Managing leads, prospects, customers, and meeting revenue goals
Solution: Customer relationship management (CRM) platforms
When it comes to managing leads and prospects, there are so many pieces of information to consider.
For any given contact, you need:
- An accurate and easily accessible record of their contact information
- Communication preferences (if applicable)
- Transaction history
- Notes
- A calendar and past events
- Follow-up activities (the what and the when with scheduling capability)
- Future opportunities
- Communication history (such as a record of all past calls, emails, and meetings)
Managing all of these different elements requires a high level of organization and a serious commitment of time. But the right CRM solution can help you get in top shape in very little time. You’ll be able to quickly or even automatically add new prospects and leads to your database, integrate your calendar and emails, schedule follow-up activities, share prospect information with fellow members of your team, and more. So check out top tools like Salesforce, HubSpot, and Pipedrive.
Pro Tip: Make sure your CRM solution integrates seamlessly with your B2B eCommerce platform.
Challenge: Remote collaboration with buyers
Solution: Collaborative commerce
Even in the years leading up to this new reality, sales reps’ hectic, travel-filled schedules began to see change. Thanks to the widespread adoption of fantastic remote tools, it’s possible to collaborate effectively, from afar. And whether appointments take place in person or online, these relationships have become a lot more collaborative. Sales reps and buyers are working together to determine the best inventory for retailers’ stores – for in-season orders and pre-sales alike.
Add these sales rep tools to your arsenal:
- B2B eCommerce: Use a wholesale eCommerce platform like NuORDER to work effectively with Marketing, Sales, and your wholesale clients. These sales rep tools can be incredibly rich. For example, NuORDER empowers your sales process with a virtual showroom, 1-click online shopping, digital versions of key sales material like lookbooks, filters designed to suit the way buyers shop, and even a whiteboard tool to assist virtual and hybrid meetings. You can also take real-time digital notes to be shared with your customers and save and review order drafts to remind them of their favorite SKUs. And for another highlight, you can use its in-platform system for sending, tracking, and analyzing email campaigns.
- Video conferencing: A must for virtual appointments. Get comfortable with a popular, trusted tool such as Zoom, Skype for Business, or Google Meet. Be sure to learn all of the features and settings, and practice sending invites and sharing your screen
Challenge: Managing responsibilities, market weeks, and more
Solution: Project management tools
Project management tools can help you manage all of your online and offline interactions with buyers. Check out trusted apps like Things 3, Asana, and Trello. Choose a tool that integrates with your calendar to save time when you have to prepare for calls. Also add a user(s), such as an assistant, to your system of choice to make it easier to track tasks and delegate.
Challenge: Signing contracts from afar
Solution: eSignature software
In this new world of hybrid sales, it’s important to be able to finalize contracts quickly and securely – even while working from a distance. Thankfully there are lots of great eSignature solutions on the market. Check out trusted electronic signature subscriptions to companies like PandaDoc, Adobe Sign, and DocuSign.
The benefits include:
- Legally-binding signatures
- Approval workflows
- Templates
- Document analytics
- Useful integrations (e.g. to your favorite CRM system)
- Desktop and mobile functionality
- Privacy, security, and data compliance
Challenge: Maintaining effective internal communication from afar
Solution: Messaging apps
Get a great messaging app to communicate more effectively and efficiently with the rest of your organization, even while working remotely. The best messaging solutions for businesses allow you to search past conversations, contribute to special channels or threads, send private messages, upload documents, and integrate with key solutions like Google Drive. You can even host video-conferencing calls with some solutions, like Microsoft Teams and Slack.
What is the best sales rep software?
The best sales rep software works seamlessly with your strategies to either support or enhance your current processes. It should be easy to use but feature the complex functionality you need behind the scenes for things like seamless, real-time inventory information, deep data and analytics, and support for the latest in multimedia presentations. So don’t settle. Analyze your goals and think about your clients, brands, and target market before you start shopping.
There can be a lot of elements to consider when it comes to wholesale eCommerce. Here are a few tips to get started:
- Get out there: Explore the marketplace to get in touch with retailers with similar target markets, price ranges, and adjacent brands to your current partner stores. The best platforms give you access to top businesses located around the globe.
- Get personal: Choose a wholesale eCommerce platform that allows you to create, edit and share custom linesheets. While your set of general linesheets will be more than sufficient for most prospects, invest the time to cater to specific clientele, whether they’re your current customers or prospects of particular interest. Analyze their current inventories, target markets, any plans they may have for upcoming seasons and important trends. For existing clients, review past sales history and insights in your B2B eCommerce platform to create informed offerings. Then personalize linesheets featuring only the SKUs that stand to hold the most potential for their businesses. These tightly-focused edits will put you and your brand in a professional light while saving buyers’ time, improving your relationships, and increasing the odds for making or increasing the sale.
- Sell what sells: Create a mini presentation of your brand’s best-selling items. When you let clients and prospects know which items have the greatest sell-through, they’re likely to consider those items first. You might even want to feature these SKUs of interest on the homepage of your virtual showroom.
- Think about market weeks: Use a B2B eCommerce platform that partners with the most important digital and hybrid trade shows for your brand. You’ll be exactly where your target prospects are so you can cater to their needs and sell successfully. For example, NuORDER’s partners include Grassroots Outdoor Alliance, New York Fashion Week and MICAM Milano.
- Get visual: Choose a platform that lets buyers visualize their assortments. Make sure it allows them to use filters like delivery dates, seasons, colors, sizes and price points.That will help them better understand their needs to view your offerings from a clear perspective. And when you make it easier to do business, buyers are more enthusiastic about working with you.
- Make it easier to get paid: Use a platform with plenty of payment support. Look for features like shipment cost calculations, credit card payments, instant financing and collecting payment at the time of the order or instantly upon shipping. Bring ease to your job; look for a B2B eCommerce solution with in-depth daily, monthly and annual reports.
- Hit the streets: Always be prepared with a wholesale eCommerce tool that moves with you. The best solutions are available on both desktop and mobile devices – and they allow you to work offline, to sync everything at a later time.
Help sales reps and buyers succeed
Success should be a two-way street. Adopt tools designed to help everyone fulfill their needs.
Here are a few great tech tools and guides to get started:
- Sales rep software video guides for buyers and sales reps
- Resources for buyers: Find your sales reps
- Digital lookbooks, linesheets, catalogs, campaigns...
- International sizing charts and fit guides
- True-to-life product videos
With the right tech tools at your fingertips, you can work more efficiently while taking your strategies to new heights. Invest some time into exploring the sales rep software most likely to make an incredible impact on your business. The best tools are easy to explore and uncomplicated in design. They offer seamless onboarding processes and accessible customer support too. So start transforming your sales today.
NuORDER is a B2B eCommerce platform and marketplace, connecting retailers and brands and streamlining the wholesale process for virtual, hybrid and in-person market appointments. The NuORDER platform offers a seamless and collaborative way to do business with interactive and customizable solutions, easy payments, real-time inventory insights, comprehensive data and more for increasingly informed buying decisions.
