I was sitting in a hotel in Dallas, Texas with a salesperson for a manufacturing firm that's based on the West Coast. "Watch this," he said. "This should take about fifteen minutes.%
In fact, it took a couple of minutes longer. But what he showed me was a way for him to pull together information that he was going to use for a major account presentation the next day. "How much difference did that make for you?ä I asked.
"It's incredible.% he replied, "It used to take me weeks to pull this stuff together. I'd call and leave messages for people and ask them to send me things, and try to get accounting to give me a history of the folks I was calling on. I spend about 90% of my time scrambling for information and about 10% of my time putting it together.%
And now? Now he was spending about 10% of his time getting the information, and the majority of his time -- a couple of hours -- putting it together. That's just one of the powerful ways that you can support your sales force by making things available on the Net.
The best way to figure out what would be helpful is to ask your salespeople what they need when they are putting together a sales presentation. Here are some suggestions, based on my consulting work.
Account background and history. Most of the companies that I've worked with make this available as a reply to an e-mail. It's possible, though, to make it available directly.
Make technical information available. This includes information like product specification sheets, applications, backup sales literature, and more.
PowerPoint presentations have become part of many sales toolkits today, both for standup presentations and Desktop presentations. Make PowerPoint slide sets available so your salespeople can put together their own program.
Don't stop with PowerPoint. Look for other programs, such as QuickTime Movies, Photographs, and other materials that will help folks put their kit together quickly.
And don't forget sales aids. Take some of the training materials that you may have already given to folks, and make them available online to help them structure a presentation or review prior to one.
Making It Work
The key to a good system like this is to make it possible for your salespeople to get information at the last minute and when the office is closed. Use that as your test.
If you've got a company Intranet that folks can sign onto from the road, that's a great place to have this information; but if you don't, you can do the same job with a password-protected portion of your public site or with a separate non-public and password-protected site.
Created/Revised/Reviewed: 30 July 2002
This is only one Big Idea. You'll find more in Wally's book, What's the Big Idea? and in his Big Idea column. There's a complete list on the Main Big Idea page. You may also order the book by clicking here.
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