MULTICHANNEL MARKETING: Sales teams field Web growth Mar 1, 2000 12:00 PM
, Paul Miller
JobZone
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B-to-b mailers emphasize the continued importance of the human touch
Forrester Research predicts that U.S. b-to-b e-commerce revenue will hit
$1.3 trillion over the next three years, compared to $108 billion in
consumer e-commerce revenue.
As a result, some b-to-b catalogers hope to cut back on catalog pages and
reduce their print circulation in favor of their more efficient Web
businesses. But of those employing field sales reps, few seem willing to
reduce the size of that work force.
A number of b-to-b catalogers believe the Web simply can't replace the
personalized service of a field sales team. "Customers want attention. They
want that arm put around them, so field sales are the backbone of what we
do," says Rick Coalter, director of marketing for Scarsdale, NY-based
plumbing supplies cataloger J.A. Sexauer.
In light of this, the $76 million Sexauer, which produces a 1,400-plus-page
master catalog every other year and three smaller specialty books a year,
has no plans to scale back its field sales staff of 200. "We do see more
people buying out of catalogs and our Website," Coalter says, "but we also
see the continued need for our salespeople....When you're talking repair
parts, customers need to see the types available and have their uses
demonstrated."
Many catalogers serving high-tech industries are also retaining sales
forces. Bankers Systems, a $115 million cataloger of financial software and
printed forms, has found that field sales reps armed with catalogs sell its
products most effectively. The St. Cloud, MN-based cataloger, which has 100
field sales reps and another 50 inhouse telesales reps, has no plans to cut
any of its sales team, says director of corporate marketing Peggy Wilson.
Although Bankers Systems' Web catalog is fully transactional, Wilson says
the company relies on the Web more for software fulfillment than for
selling. "Most of our products are high-technology software, and that
requires face-to-face selling" for product demonstrations, she says. "The
product is complicated, and is only becoming more complicated. E-commerce
doesn't bring much value to the process of explaining it to customers."
"Field salespeople need to add value beyond what can be done either in
catalogs or on the Internet," agrees Chaz Henry, vice president of
configurator sales at Clarify, a San Jose, CA-based customer relationship
management software firm. With so much information already available on
catalogers' Websites, the role of field sales these days goes well beyond
"you pick it, you got it" selling, Henry says. "That doesn't add any value.
The best use of field sales teams is to move into more complex products
that can't be explained so easily on the Web."
A matter of customer preference
Like other marketers of complex products, $7 billion printing equipment
company Unisys Direct relies on its field salespeople to demonstrate its
wares. But last year the Blue Bell, PA-based firm analyzed its selling
scheme, polled customers, and decided that its 1,200 field salespeople
needed to focus more heavily on customers from larger companies. Now
Unisys's sales force spends most of its time with the top 1,000 accounts.
"We are going to use the Web and telesales as channels to make it easier
for customers, but we're not going to try to channel them to the Web and
away from our salesmen," says spokesman Jay Grossman. Unisys's
transactional Website was launched a few years ago.
At R.S. Means, which sells cost manuals for construction professionals,
"bigger jobs are automatically referred to our salespeople; the catalog and
our Website serve only smaller jobs," says direct mail manager Murray Smith
Jr. "The salespeople may use the catalog for lead generation or referrals."
In addition to demonstrating and explaining products, field salespeople can
also "go high or low" in setting prices with individual customers - a
distinct advantage, Sexauer's Coalter notes, "because when you publish a
price in a catalog, you've set the bar and can only drop the price from
there." Even though you can make frequent changes to the content on a Web
catalog, you still risk putting off customers if you try to raise prices
over the prices originally posted on the sites, he says.
A more elementary factor also keeps Coalter bullish on field sales: A
number of Sexauer's customers aren't yet on the 'Net. The cataloger's
primary audience of hospitals and schools notwithstanding, "many of our
customers are small mom-and-pop hotels, apartment building superintendents,
and others that may not have access to the Internet."
