A large distributor in the medical supply space wanted to maximize the value of every sales call. There is great potential for inside sales reps to boost sales if they have strategic guidance on who to call and what to sell them.
To go from passive callers (“Hey, it’s Jill, checking in. Do you need anything?”) to proactive order-makers (“Hey, it’s Jill. I’m looking at your account and noticing you’re likely running low on gloves; can I get an order started for you?”), inside sales reps need to be hyper-informed about customer needs. If they had a targeted list of who to call and ideas of products to discuss with the customer based on their search and purchase history, rather than just calling to check in with a customer and casually inquiring about what they might need, the sales call would be more efficient and effective.
Revenue per customer call is likely to grow when a sales rep offers a personalized touch and suggests specific products such as items due to reorder, products that are often needed or sold with other items the customer is buying, or relevant wallet share growth opportunities (“I noticed you’ve never purchased PPE from us. What can we do to win that business?”).
With the right tool, an inside sales rep can make more sales per call and capitalize on each and every call they make. They can actively create orders by calling customers when they are most likely to need products, and they can prevent churn by knowing about the customer’s health and status before making the call. Technology turns inside sales teams into order-making machines.
The distributor partnered with Proton, giving reps a cutting-edge recommendation engine. The service helped them maintain call quantity while increasing call quality.
Proton’s cutting-edge artificial intelligence platform processes sales data and predicts what each customer is most likely to buy. Now, when reps move through their
CRM-assigned calls they use Proton’s recommendations to grow sales for each account.
In effect, making a personalized pitch is no more work than making pitching the same product to all customers. Calls still take the same amount of time. But now instead of making a generic pitch, reps can now pitch customers on products they are likely to buy based upon their account history.
The distributor does not currently require that reps use Proton. In comparing users and non-users, however, managers noticed a dramatic boost in dollars per product pitched when using Proton.
Without Proton, the average rep made 99 cents for every product pitched. After deploying Proton reps hauled in an average of $13 per product pitched.
While some customers will order items without intervention, this 13x increase shows that there are many more customers that will only place orders when appealing pitches are made. Proton’s recommendation engine helps make the process of pitching new items easy for reps, so that they can bring in more revenue while calling the same number of customers.
Recognizing the value of this tool, the company has made Proton an integral part of their on- boarding process. “It’s fabulous,” a happy sales team leader remarked.
The distributor will soon make complete use of Proton’s capabilities by fully integrating the service into their CRM. This will let Proton’s AI assign calls based on which accounts present the best sales opportunities. Accounts more likely to make purchases may be bigger businesses, or those about to re-order their usual supplies.
In the future, when reps call to pitch customers on personalized items, they’ll already be talking to customers who are primed to make purchases.
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