Salespeople will face drastic ch

Salespeople will face drastic changes. The next five years will prove a tremendous culture shock to distributor sales representatives. As distributors streamline to compete, they will make greater use of the vast technological and human resources at their fingertips. The result will be a changed, and possibly diminished, role   for the distributor salesperson.    By John J. McCann

      Experts predict that by the year 2002, corporations around the world will save up to $1.25 trillion close to France's entire gross domestic product doing business over the Internet. The Internet will have a drastic effect on not only how products are sold, but also how manufacturers, distributor sales representatives and end users interact.

     "Virtual meetings" are becoming an efficient way to do business, and manufacturers looking to cut costs in the next five years will introduce new products to distributors via teleconferencing sessions over the Internet.

     The teleconferencing sessions will be viewed by distributors and will be held at the manufacturer's headquarters. Everyone attending the teleconference will learn how to properly use the new product and distributor salespeople will have the chance to ask questions of the people who actually developed the product.

    By teleconferencing product launches, the manufacturer can reach hundreds of thousands of potential distributors, and some larger end users, at a fraction of the cost of more traditional communication methods. Teleconferences as distributor benefits
     Teleconferenced product launches will make the distributor's job selling new products easier. Following the manufacturer-hosted teleconferences, distributors will be able to download product information, sales literature and MSDS sheets onto CDs that can be shown to customers.

     Distributors and manufacturer's representatives will use e-mail to make initial contact with customers regarding a new product. Customers will be instructed to visit a specific web site where they will answer a few questions designed by the manufacturer to gauge the customer's need for the product. If a customer's answers indicate a need for the new product, the end user can view a live-action video on the web site, or watch the CD if the distributor has had the opportunity to provide it.

    Product technical questions will be answered via Internet either by the distributor's customer service technician or the manufacturer's product development department.

    By using the Internet to introduce customers to new products, distributors will be able to provide immediate access to product information and pertinent safety data for the end user's company safety committees.

   The electronic briefcase

Because of the important role computers will play in how they do business, distributor sales representatives will have to become experts in computer operations and the Internet.

    A great deal of distributor sales representative training will involve computers that will continue to get smaller and perform a greater number of functions. The distributor salesperson's computers of the future will be hand-held, won't need to be plugged in to phone lines and also will serve as cellular phones, message pagers and vehicle navigation systems.

    On sales calls, these small, business computers will be more important to distributor sales representatives than briefcases. During a call, salespeople will be able to tap into home office databases and print out any information a customer may need to the customer's printer before the sales call is completed.

    The computerization of sales may be unpleasant to some old-time sales professionals, but the cost savings and efficiency it offers make it inevitable in almost all industries.

   Inside sales

    Because of an increased emphasis on efficiency, distributors five years from now will not be willing to pay salespeople to handle orders of less than $1,000. Many industry experts have implored distributors to eliminate the bottom percentage of customers who are not being serviced at a profitable rate. In a very short time, these customers will only be contacted through telemarketing programs, and the accounts will be turned over to customer service representatives.

    Many sales representatives currently are assigned a customer service representative whose main job is to handle small problems, track the status of orders, place normal supply orders and answer basic technical questions. In the future, the customer service representative will have an expanded role, and will bear primary responsibility for day-to-day account-maintenance functions now performed by salespeople. New sales positions only will be created for expanding territories or new markets.

    Not only will few sales resources be spent on small customers, but few shipping resources will be allocated as well. Customers who currently order less than $1,000 in goods will be required to travel to outlets & shy; either redistribution outlets at distributorships, or large, multi-location retail stores to purchase the small amount of supplies they need to operate their buildings.

    This streamlining of sanitary-supply-distributor operations will have a similar effect on the end user. End users who wish to maintain contact with a distributor's sales representatives will be forced to consolidate suppliers in order to exceed set minimum dollar order amounts.

   Compensation

    Changing the number and size of accounts sales representatives handle will necessitate changes in how these salespeople are treated and compensated. In the past, sales representatives have been treated almost as independent contractors, making their own decisions about which accounts to pursue and receiving commissions, accordingly. Five years from now, some of that independence will be retained. Salespeople will work out of their homes, as distributors no longer will want to maintain costly in-house office space. This space can be better utilized for expanding inventory and enlarging teleconferencing centers.

       On the other hand, salespeople will not be paid like independent contractors in the future. As    companies continue to take accounts from salespeople and increase the minimum order amount on which they will pay a commission, there are likely to be some rumblings of discontent.

     For this reason, salespeople of the future will not be paid a commission but will receive a reasonable salary and full expense reimbursement. They will become more of an employee of the distributor than an independent contractor.

    In addition to salary, salespeople will receive monthly profit-sharing payments based on how well the distributorship performs. These checks will get salespeople thinking more about ways to improve their company's operations, and less about small, lost accounts.

       Selling in the new millennium will be fun and exciting, but also very different from what sales    professionals are accustomed to. Competition will force streamlining and computerization of distributor operations at an alarming rate, and those who prepare now will be ahead of the rest later.

   Streamlining the warehouse

       The computerization and streamlining that will change the role of the distributor sales    representative will have an equal effect on warehouse operations. In the warehouse of the 21st century, incoming truck orders will be offloaded by computerized    machines and stored in the warehouse automatically. These machines will be highly sophisticated and multi-functional.

        For example, forklifts will have the ability to read bar codes on the sides of pallets of product,  eliminating the need for a person to manually scan each pallet. Once the bar code is read by the forklift's computer eye, the machine will know where to take the pallet to store it for future customer processing.

     Naturally, the forklift computer will be connected to the distributor's computer network, and once the pallet is stored, the forklift's computer automatically will update in-house inventory records.

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