Does any e-commerce company have a dedicated salesperson

[chris ashdown]

Traditionally we have relied on Adwords, Bing and natural listings to get our orders, but now considering using a dedicates out of office sales person as well

Do any of you have much experience of having a sales person working out side of the office getting sales and how effective has it been

We have found Adwords sales dropping over the last two years whilst much larger increase in costs to keep in top three positions

[Fairyglass]

Hi Chris,
For the wholesale side of our business we recently took on a sales manager, who works remotely. She doesn't have access to Sellerdeck but can access Sage information remotely- all our SD sales are transferred into Sage so she can still see everything this way. I'd be happy to have a pm chat with you about this if it's of interest?
Best wishes,
Ben

[jont]

On the wine side we have a dedicated salesman. He targets the bigger accounts with the internet generating the smaller leads and enquiries.

We find certain customers will always prefer a face to face meeting rather than entrust a random website with their order. It makes you stand out from the crowd and offer a personal service. The client also has a dedicated point of contact rather than a sales@ email or a generic phone number.

The salesman has to be very proactive and be a defined route to market. If good they should also spot opportunities outside the usual channels for example seeing a news article about Student Week in a local paper and selling them a load of printed t-shirts for the student union to sell with the date and event as a keep sake.

They can be expensive to maintain and obviously need to be self-sustaining and that can be some time in coming. A part timer may be an option to start with. Setting the right targets and payment levels is essential.

[chris ashdown]

Thanks Ben & John

Its a hard decision to make, that's for sure, Quite a long start-up period from hire to first sale for the larger orders plus car and fuel etc.

Being UK wide does not help either with potential large accommodation costs on top

Traditionally there were agents who served a small number of companies and wandered around the area selling a very wide range of goods so sales were relatively easy and they could exist on commission, great for all, but nowadays they seem to have gone away and just work for companies who pay a basic wage.

PPC has its good points even though quite expensive but does cover a lot of ground, Have tried Email and Fax to little reward but may consider the old humble postman who at least gets to the right person in most cases, but again expensive

Ben what does your sales girl actually do just cold call from home or get out and pound the streets or go for the big contracts listed in the gov websites

[Fairyglass]

Hi Chris,

We've been lucky in that our new girl has 20 years experience in our industry and knows most of the buyers, both in the larger groups and smaller retailers. She works mostly from home but is happy to visit and present to the larger buyers or anyone else who requires a visit. Most of our customers are smaller retailers who we'll see at trade shows once or twice a year, and often a telephone call and posted catalogue is enough to jog a memory and gain an order. I'll drop you a pm with more detailed info shortly.

Best wishes,
Ben