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Sales personnel will sometimes tell you, if you ask, that it is far easier to ask for orders than to actually get them. You need to follow a few select purchases through your system to the problems yourself. Ask to be notified every time a sales order is halted, stopped, delayed or sidelined. Demand that you or your designated audit team be given a written notice why sales orders cannot be fulfilled.
After independently investigating these complaints, your managers may indeed discover how difficult it is bringing new or different orders through your current system. There may be hidden road blocks preventing your company from growing. Have your most motivated employees, the sales people on incentive programs, expose those internal weaknesses and take steps to eliminate them one at a time.
Examples of roadblocks your sales people hit every day:
- Your sales person brings in a sample and purchasing tells them they cannot find the material defined in the specification. It is rare, difficult to find or maybe your people are inexperienced and embarrassed to ask.
- Your sales person asks if your firm can arrange international shipment and your freight manager says your company ships only domestically.
- Your sales person requests a product to be made in a specific color but your inexperienced engineers claim they cannot match the shade of blue requested AND they do not offer to call someone outside of the company.
- Your sales person indicates no one is reading the lengthy 49-page small print, no picture sales literature prepared only a couple of years ago and is quickly told there are too many copies left to throw away.
- Your sales people have brought RFQs (requests for quotes), but because your quoting process is too slow, most customers who initially asked, decided not to wait and chose other bidders long ago.
- Your sales people complain about the incentive programs because of the length of delay between getting an order and getting paid.
- Your sales people cannot get orders because they have many clerical tasks to finish inside the office minimizing face time with customers.
- Your sales people resist taking a drop in their base pay because they doubt they will be able to make the incentives in your company to replace the lost wages.
- Your plant ships on time but has a reputation for rejects and returns ruining the bonus program for the sales people.
- When you ask your sales people what percentage of time they are talking to customers, they tell you less than 50% due to assigned tasks easily handled by a clerk inside.
