CRM Enabled Distributors Outperform the Competition (Special Two Part Webinar Series)

 Plan to attend this two-part webinar series focusing specifically on sales effectiveness in the Supply Chain and Distribution space.

Beringer Associates, an award winning Microsoft Dynamics Partner specializes in helping their distribution clients implement and leverage CRM technology.

Joining Beringer in these webinars will be Barry Trailer, Managing Partner of CSO Insights.  CSO Insights is a recognized independent research firm that has been regularly featured in the Harvard Business Review, Business Week, Entrepreneur Magazine, the Wall Street Journal, Selling Power Magazine, Inc., CRM Magazine, etc.  Barry will be sharing insights from their 2012 Sales Performance Optimization survey.  This is a must attend webinar for distribution companies looking to dramatically increase their sales effectiveness and gain insightful knowledge on customer relationship management (CRM) solutions.

Part 1: Business Challenges Unique to Distribution Companies

Link to Registration Page - Thu, Jul 26, 2012 1:00 PM - 2:30 PM EDT

In today’s marketplace, how you sell is more important than what you sell.  This is especially true for distributors who often are offering the exact same products.  Are you viewed by your customers as a vendor, a preferred supplier, or a trusted partner?  How effectively do your reps differentiate your firm’s offerings from your competitors'?  Are you maximizing your reps’ selling time or are they, as one distribution sales exec said, “selling by wandering around”?

Attend this first segment to learn:

• the difference between front-office and back-office investments;
• the unrealized value of data locked up and inaccessible to your sales and customer support reps;
• why relying on your sales reps to generate leads is expensive, inefficient, and the hard road.

Part 2: Can Technology Really Help Boost Sales Productivity?

Link To Registration Page - Thu, Aug 2, 2012 1:00 PM - 2:30 PM EDT

In the first part of this series we talked about business issues facing distributors.  In this segment we’ll discuss ways that Customer Relationship Management (CRM) technology can enable your reps and sales managers to make the most of their most precious commodity: their time.

Here are a few interesting figures for distribution firms from CSO Insights' 2012 Survey:

Survey results for Distribution Firms	w/o CRM	w/ CRM
Voluntary Rep Turnover	18%	11%
% of Reps Meeting/Beating quota	49%	58%
Percentage of initial calls leading to presentation >50%	5%	14%
Rep Ramp-up time to full productivity >1 year	53%	44%
Percentage of Marketing Generated leads	12%	23%
Ability to Differentiate vs. Competition Exceeds Expectations	0	17%

About Barry Trailer

Barry Trailer is a managing partner and co-founder of CSO Insights, a sales effectiveness research and benchmarking firm.  In addition to more than thirty years of professional selling experience Barry has also been president of Miller-Heiman, a respected sales training firm and Goldmine, a well known CRM application.  Barry has conducted seminars with hundreds of companies, including HP, Sun Microsystems, Oracle, and Hitachi Data Systems.  He has been a keynote speaker at dozens of sales events presenting Sales Mastery.  In addition to speaking and consulting, Barry has been a regular contributor to CRM magazine, CustomerThink.com and, has been twice published (2006, 2011) in the Harvard Business Review.  With Jim Dickie, he co-authored, The Sales & Marketing Excellence Challenge and is author of Sales Mastery, a novel.  He lives in Marin County, CA.

About CSO Insights

CSO Insights has provided executives with best practices in sales and marketing for over eighteen years. Each year, we survey thousands of Chief Sales Officers (CSOs) to benchmark the use of people, process, technology, and knowledge, and the impact on sales effectiveness. We also review offerings from solution providers to retain our position as the experts on options for CSOs.  Barry Trailer is a managing partner and co-founder of CSO Insights, a sales effectiveness research and benchmarking firm.

by Beringer Associates, New Jersey Microsoft CRM Partner