Boost sales performance in a struggling electrical wholesale industry.

Taking a customer-focused approach will help to turnaround sales.

The industry has been through a lot of changes. 

It has suffered massive losses, including a global pandemic that halted trade, overpriced raw materials that lead to a stock shortage, and a supply chain crisis. 

Many smaller electrical wholesalers have joined together to create larger corporations, and many independent wholesalers have begun to sell their goods online, creating digital warehouses. These changes have also affected how sales teams do business.  

This move to a digital warehouse mindset has also given rise to an increase in single purchase transactions. Along with this, there’s the opportunity for more companies to focus on creating long-term relationships with their customers. 

Performance measurements have also changed as a result of the focus on long-term relationships. 

Measuring your sales performance.

Traditionally, electrical wholesalers measured their performance based on the number of transactions they made with existing customers or the volume of units they sold from their inventory. Although these methods don't fully point out other important performance indicators necessary for finding opportunities for improvement and boosting profitability, they are still important. 

Challenges being faced.

Electrical wholesalers can experience a range of challenges as they try to boost sales and customer retention rates.  

Because long-term relationships can lead to more profits, they are also more difficult to assess than short-term customer connections. Another issue is that sales teams may not have the correct customer information. Strong communication, customer data, and customer understanding are important for developing effective customer relationships. You need the correct information on customers so that your designated sales teams can support their needs.  

Always measure customer retention.

There's a chance that you aren't using the right performance indicators. 

While you may be focussing on increasing your gross profit and decreasing the cost of sales, this can be problematic if you don’t also measure customer retention and customer lifetime value. 

You may not be gathering the right information. Gathering the right information allows them to track performance, find areas for improvement, and forecast their sales. Without the proper information, sales managers cannot adequately measure their performance or turn around their sales. 

What does good performance look like? 

Using KPIs, wholesalers can decide if they have the right mix of products, services, and processes in place to achieve their business goals. 

Electrical wholesalers can still name areas for improvement using key performance indicators (KPIs). It can be difficult to measure individual customer relationships, but KPIs will help.  

Long-term customer relationships are built on strong relationships, and strong relationships are built on communication and understanding. 

The sales team can also use them to find opportunities for improvement and strengthen their relationships with customers. 

There can be an increase of customer loyalty by continually monitoring KPIs such as customer retention rates, customer lifetime value, customer purchase frequency, and customer spending levels. These KPIs can alert wholesalers and their sales teams to where they should concentrate their efforts to improve their relationships with customers. 

A sales rep may notice that a lot of customers regularly switch. This might signal that they need better customer service or that they need to improve their products to suit customer demands. 

The sales team can use KPIs to name areas where they are exceeding customer expectations or exceeding their own expectations to provide incentives to their customers to remain with their business or to attract new customers. 

Finding the root cause of sales problems. 

Sales managers can employ RCA (root cause analysis) to find the underlying issues preventing them from achieving their sales targets.  

RCAs can help sales team to: 

•  Find why customers are leaving. 
• Why they aren’t buying as often. 
• Why they aren't spending as much money with them as predicted. 

How managers can use RCAs.

Managers can use RCAs to assess all phases of the sales process, from marketing to customer care. They also reveal whether you should be changing your product selection or pricing strategies. 

To figure out whether you are missing anything when conducting RCAs, first set up sales goals and then assess each phase of the sales process. RCAs can be particularly beneficial if electrical wholesalers are experiencing a turnaround situation. 

Defining turnaround performance

Turnaround performance can be used to decide how much teams need to increase sales to achieve their company's growth goals.  

This can help electrical wholesalers decide how much they need to increase their sales.  

They can also use turnaround time to estimate how long it will take them to achieve their sales goals. This can be done by using the following formula:  

Turnaround performance = Sales goal / Turnaround time.  

Based on the current state of their business, sales managers can figure out whether they can achieve their sales goals.  

How can electrical wholesalers help turn around their sales? 

Electrical wholesalers can use a variety of strategies to improve their sales performance and turn around their sales. Here are five simple and straightforward ways that can help teams improve their sales: 

1. Review your product mix and make sure you are carrying products that your customers need and want.
   
2. Evaluate your pricing and make sure you are staying competitive.
   
3. Take a close look at your marketing efforts and make sure you are reaching your target segmented market.
   
4. Pay close attention to your customer service and make sure your team is supplying an exceptional experience.
   
5. Review your sales process and make sure it's effective and efficient.

Prioritizing connections

Sales managers in the electrical wholesaling industry can increase their sales and improve their overall sales performance by focusing on their customers, always.

Stronger customer relationships, stronger marketing activities, and the right mix of products and services can help electrical wholesalers turn around their sales. They should focus on strengthening each of these areas to help improve sales and turn around their sales. 

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