Teaming: Online And Direct Sales Channels

Online - Direct Sales Handshake!

If your company takes orders via both Online and Direct Sales Rep channels, you’ve likely dealt with questions about how to better integrate the two and have them work together more harmoniously.

Often times Sales Reps view the ecommerce channel as competition, unless their compensation plan includes these orders. And, even if it does, many Reps believe that if the customers called them directly and bypassed the website, the average order size would be higher. (Which is often true.)

Definitions: So we are on the same page, in this blog the term Online or Ecommerce refers to a customer or prospect going to your website and placing an order on their own, i.e. self service. A Direct Sales Channel may include Outbound Sales, Inbound Sales or Field Sales team members.

Here are three options to consider if you are looking at how to better integrate and create teaming between your online channel and direct sales channels.

1. Everyone Gets Credit: Estimate your online business, include these dollars within sales rep quotas, then provide sales credit to the Sales Reps for all orders-regardless of the sales channel. Pros: Helps to promote a team environment between ecomm and direct sales channels. Should encourage sales reps to direct customers to order on the web for small, transactional purchases. Cons: Online business is often hard to predict especially for brand new business, so you may set quotas too high or too low. Sales may get double counted (i.e. both channels) for sales reporting purposes. Depending on how your comp plans work, could be costly to the firm
2. Ad-Hoc Credit: Provide “ad-hoc” sales credit for online orders when the Sales Reps can prove that they influenced the sale, perhaps through activities recorded in your CRM system. Depending on your online average order size, you may also need to apply incremental quota if you apply incremental sales credit. Pros: Reps get paid only on orders that they influenced. Cons: 100% manual and somewhat subjective. Added costs.
3. Sales Rep Follow-up: After a customer orders online, allow the Sales Reps to make follow-up calls to some or all of the Ecomm transaction to attempt to upsell and cross-sell Pros: Allows your customers to order the way they want, but still get the benefit of a sales touch which will likely lead to a higher average order size for some and improve customer retention Cons: Customers who ordered on the web, did so for a reason and may not respond well to a follow-up call. The added sales touch also adds incremental cost to the transactions.

If you decide to keep the channels separate, i.e. to pay Sales Reps only on sales that they close and enter into your system- and keep online separate, there are also pros and cons. Pros: Clear delineation between channels, clean sales reporting, lowest cost ecomm transactions. Cons: Does not promote teaming or integration between departments. Reps may discourage customers from ordering on the websites and spend too much time selling & entering small, transactions.

Have you tried one of these options? What was the outcome? Or do you have other suggestions? I’d love to hear your feedback via comments.

Also, you may want to consider this from the customer’s point of view. Check out the blog post “Online Ordering Versus Calling In” from Nora Dunn. A short and interesting read.

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