Manufacturer visits can be a pain point for distributors. The good (and maybe for some, surprising) news: They can be managed with your CRM system.
Back in the day at my family’s rep/distribution business, we could have had three to five manufacturers in any given week making sales calls with our team and visiting our headquarters in Louisiana. We eventually found that a proactive approach with these visits helped reduce the chaos and boost their effectiveness.
Use a CRM system to build and share a calendar for vendor visits so that everyone is on the same page, shifting the responsibility away from the sales team. With a system in place, a sales manager can tap the most recent information on opportunities with that manufacturer and build a schedule that will maximize that supplier’s time with your company.
I addressed the topic of manufacturer visits in a recent blog for mdm.com. For more ideas from your peers on managing these visits, read the MDM blog here.