Summary
Does anyone want to increase revenue, reduce expenses and increase quality?
Analysis
National, Regional and Territorial Sales Managers: How do you improve your Sales Team's performance? A few ideas jump out from this new technology.
1) Time Wasting Expense Reports: In one word, "Yuck". The sale person can pre-complete 80% of your expense fields once, the payment transaction will provide the establishment information, date, etc. and the sales person will just need to add a few items from the drop down menu on the phone.
2) Sales Closing Demographics: Sales Reps are often unique. Just like professional sports teams have a great winning percentage under certain circumstances (home games, certain combination of talent, preparation routine, etc.) so do many Sales Reps. By tracking relevant metrics by person, you can help them put the odds in their favor.
Examples could include (in addition to what you might already be tracking): Restaurants, hotels, conference rooms within the hotel and other venues utilized, days of the week and appointment times. The patterns may be more psychology than anything, but in a dog-eat-dog world, give them the edge. Denny’s may be great for a $100 sale but buyers expect a certain range of “quality” for $1,000 or $1M purchases.
3) Corporate Discounts: If your organization is spending thousands of dollars a month with national vendors, why not engage the potential, already approved vendors in a "best-value war" for your business dollars. Premier restaurants and hotels with "excess capacity" could offer multi-tiered discounts nationally at any moment in time based on city, day of the week, month-to-date money spent with them, etc. By "screening" these offers through home office software, only the "preferred choices" can be uploaded to your Sales Reps phone for their planning purposes. Ritz for the price of an “average” hotel for your top 25% performers might be a nice perk.
4) Fraud: Lose your cards and there is not an immediate "tracking device" built in. Lose your phone with some "smart-PIN" technology and it will be difficult for anyone else to buy anything.
As with these ideas and all others, quality decisions on the infrastructure in which they are used and Execution-Excellence will determine your individual success.
