{"id":19200,"date":"2025-03-05T22:38:56","date_gmt":"2025-03-05T21:38:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/customersx.ch\/uncategorized-en\/2025\/sales-efficiency-for-industrial-companies\/"},"modified":"2025-03-05T22:38:57","modified_gmt":"2025-03-05T21:38:57","slug":"sales-efficiency-for-industrial-companies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/customersx.ch\/en\/blogencc\/2025\/sales-efficiency-for-industrial-companies\/","title":{"rendered":"Sales efficiency for industrial companies"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
Many industrial companies are currently facing numerous challenges: Supply bottlenecks, rising raw material prices and changing customer requirements are just a few examples. At the same time, many industrial companies are successfully holding their own and maintaining or even increasing their turnover. The first glance at the balance sheet therefore often looks good to very good. One topic that is often hidden and forgotten in companies is sales efficiency. Sales efficiency is about continuously making better use of existing resources and skills and improving profits – not turnover! Many companies are not aware of the enormous potential that lies dormant in their company in this area. But how can sales efficiency be increased for industrial companies? We offer comprehensive support on the topic of increasing sales efficiency for industrial companies<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t How is a customer care plan structured? The first step is to systematize the various touchpoints or contact channels. For industrial companies, this includes, for example: personal visits AD, telephone AD, telephone ID, email AD, email ID, email automation software (marketing). This list quickly makes it clear that the general touchpoint systems published in many places fall short when it comes to increasing sales efficiency. In sales, it is important to break down the touchpoints more granularly according to their costs. Does the specific sales representative call or a person from the back office? Over the course of a year, this has a major impact on the time budget of individual people and therefore on costs.<\/p>\n Systematic approach to a support plan to increase sales efficiency for sales companies<\/p>\n Studies show that sales representatives spend 70% of their time on administrative tasks and only 30% on customer service. This ratio needs to be fundamentally improved and illustrates the enormous potential for efficiency in many companies. <\/p>\n The first three steps for developing a support plan are presented below. This must be further subdivided for the respective industrial company and worked out as two separate activities for repurchase and cross-selling. The first step in developing a support plan is to define the number of personal visits and telephone calls by the sales force for A and B customers. This is different for every industrial company. The size of the product range (cross-selling!), purchasing cycles, need for explanation of the product range, intensity of competition, etc. are dimensions that need to be taken into account. The second step is to determine for which activities and how often the back office contacts B and C customers by telephone or email. This shows how important it is to use four clusters for industrial companies. Otherwise, too many customers would fall into the C segment and clarity would be lost. The third step is to determine how to improve the efficiency of support for D customers. The use of marketing automation software is a good option here, as a large customer base usually needs to be addressed, which, if managed individually, quickly results in high sales costs. <\/p>\n Following the development, the support plan must be discussed with the respective employees and it must be ensured that the existing CRM system (or Excel or Google Sheets) also maps the respective support activities. Such an introduction in sales will meet with resistance in many companies. The sales figures often show no necessity at all. In general, performance indicators are not popular in sales and many employees have been with the company for a long time and are deeply convinced that they know exactly how the respective customers should be optimally supported. A major misunderstanding needs to be explicitly cleared up. Sales efficiency is not the same as sales effectiveness. The approach presented here does not help to improve sales effectiveness. Which sales arguments are used, which people are processed in the buying center, how the price is set, etc. are questions of sales effectiveness. Efficiency is aimed at optimizing employees’ time as a resource and thereby increasing profits. <\/p>\n Once the support plan has been drawn up and data documentation has been ensured in an IT tool, how often should the sales team discuss the results? It is important to understand that this approach is not aimed purely at control and punishment, but at the sales team learning together. For example, the impact of the support plan on the respective customer segment can be reviewed every quarter based on the number of deals and lost orders. If it becomes apparent that a more efficient form of support has an impact on the probability of profit, particularly for A and B customers, other efficiency measures need to be defined so that the goal of increasing efficiency is not “bought” with a decrease in effectiveness. <\/p>\n
A central component is customer value(see blog post<\/a>). If a company has a customer value model – initially usually a contribution margin model, later a scoring model and even later a customer lifetime model – then the foundation has been laid for improving sales efficiency for industrial companies. There are 4 points to consider: <\/p>\n\n
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tDistribution\t\t\t\t\t<\/h4>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
Systematic approach to a support plan to increase sales efficiency for sales companies<\/h2>\n