The most productive building materials sales teams are those who are meaningfully supported by their managers. Sending sales reps out into the world on their own, without the right tools and business model running in the background, is a recipe for disappointing sales performance.
This has never been as true as it is in 2023. With the world transitioning to a post-pandemic reality, effectively leveraging your remote salesforce is critical. Sales reps are highly likely to work more than 40 hours per week according to Hubspot, with many of those hours spent on the go.
Accordingly, if you want to stay competitive as a building materials brand, you’ll need some flexible, forward-thinking methods to help your sales team excel at what they do.
Here, we’ll go over 7 key ways building product companies can set their reps up for success in 2023 and beyond:
1. Distribute Sales and Presentation Materials Faster with RevBase
A great starting point for empowering your reps? Provide them with the effective sales collateral they need, when they need it.
According to stats gathered by Zendesk, 54% of sales reps agree that digital tools help them win over prospects. Imagine how true this is for tools that help them retrieve sales assets instantly, while they’re actively involved in promising discussions with leads.
If a certain content piece is needed to move a deal across the finish line, your reps should be able to access it in seconds!
Using a modern digital asset management tool (DAM) is the best way to make this happen, and you’ll want a best-in-class DAM like RevBase on your side.
With RevBase, a sales rep can easily access sales sheets, brochures, presentations, and more from wherever they are, as long as they have an internet connection. This will help more deals cross the finish line faster, without hiccups or frustrations on either side of the table.
2. Generate More Leads with Bullseye Dealer Locator Software
Bringing potential customers to your site is a great step. They aren’t yet leads, however.
To turn a random web visitor, such as a homeowner, into a lead, you need to point them to an authorized local dealer or installer to take the next step. That’s where a premium locator software like Bullseye Locations comes into play.
With Bullseye, you can effortlessly drive your web visitors to local dealers and contractors, and even collect their contact information as they fill out a form to request more info. Not only will this help strengthen your brand’s relationships with local dealers, you’ll be furnishing your sales reps with more highly-invested leads.
Get your Bullseye-built locator page up and running, and you’ll do two great things for your customers: you’ll show them where to buy your products, and hand more of them over to an enabled sales rep who’s ready to answer their questions.
3. Upskill Your Sales Reps with Product Training
A salesperson who’s informed is one who’s ready to close deals. Beyond a can-do personality and confidence, your sales professionals will need specialized knowledge of your products, their use cases, and their proper implementation and maintenance if you want to see more local registers ring.
How can you get there? By implementing a training program for your sales reps.
For example, a manufacturer of eco-friendly insulation will want to train their salespeople not only on the environmental benefits of the product, but features that make it a cut above the competition (such as, for example, a proprietary composition that’s longer-lasting and yields greater energy savings for homeowners).
Consider setting up an organized training program that takes your sales reps through all the ins and outs of your product lines. To evaluate their knowledge, create some form of testing — having reps study for an exam will help ingrain the most important points.
Implementing a solid program can even lead to some friendly competition between sales reps. You could put company prizes on the line to incentivize sharper product knowledge and sales performance.
4. Furnish Your Reps with Powerful Case Studies
Few sales tools are more powerful than a case study. Nearly half of B2B buyers trust them, according to the CMO Council.
This only makes sense, as buyers can relate the most to others with similar needs and similar levels of skepticism. A strong, relevant case study can help your sales reps blast through doubts, as they clearly demonstrate how your products have made past customers’ lives easier.
Let’s say you’re a roofing materials manufacturer. You might collect case studies that variously highlight product benefits like improved energy efficiency, lower maintenance costs, and stronger protection against catastrophic weather events.
A customer living in a hurricane-prone area might get over the hump and buy after reading the weather-related testimonial.
Want to truly maximize the usefulness of collateral like this? Leverage a solution like RevBase so they can be quickly retrieved and shared by your sales reps in the field.
5. Implement Cross-Functional Collaboration
It might sound like a cliché, but the employees of your building materials company really do constitute a complete team. Just as in sports, teamwork leads to great accomplishments.
Your sales reps should be tightly integrated with the rest of the organization so that cross-functional collaboration naturally occurs.
Meetings held at regular intervals to update the sales team on product developments and upcoming launches will go a long way. Rather than being caught off-guard by product line changes, your reps can be informed about key initiatives, helping sales interactions stay fresh.
Your marketing team might also meet with sales to share which elements of your company’s online outreach (such as social media ads or web pages) are seeing the most traffic and engagement. Sales reps, in turn, will know what kind of messages to lead with the next time they talk to a prospect.
To make collaborative efforts run smoother than ever, there’s no better digital partner than a tool like RevBase. It allows personnel to share assets and support each other on the fly, while tracking file revisions and maintaining a log of changes any team member can reference.
6. Forge Stronger Bonds with Local Channel Partners
Your company’s local channel partners are effectively an extension of your sales team, as long as the relationship is managed well. Strengthening that bond will indirectly make the job of your in-house sales team easier.
How? For one, by enabling your local dealers with effective collateral, such as custom catalogs and product information sheets, any customer that shows up at the cash register will get to know what sets your brand apart. A sales rep who follows up with that customer, in turn, will have an easier time earning repeat business.
Another way this could work? Use a high-quality locator on your site to put customers in touch instantly with the right local dealer or contractor. As you build goodwill with local pros by sending customers their way, your sales reps can enter the picture to support in-progress deals or upsell value-added services.
Building stronger bonds with channel partners helps your whole sales ecosystem. Yet again, having the best digital tools at your disposal makes this easy.
RevBase can help get the right materials to your channel partners fast, and a Bullseye-built locator can funnel customers directly to those partners. In the end, your sales team will have a bigger, better-qualified pool of leads to work with.
7. Create Immersive Tech-Enabled Customer Experiences
While traditional sales tactics like regularly following up with leads, creating strong relationships with longtime customers, and highlighting the unique value proposition of your products will always be key…there’s something to be said for staying innovative.
In 2023, you don’t want to ignore what new technologies can bring to the table. As building materials sales processes evolve and respond to modern consumer expectations, you’ll need new methods for appealing to your prospects’ senses while setting your brand apart.
The possibilities are nearly endless, and they can all empower your sales reps as a helpful side effect. Here are just a few technologies to consider:
Augmented-Reality Experiences
Technology can be used both to add the “wow” factor and highlight what makes products special. Augmented reality (AR) applications let you create an experience for your customers within the spaces they know.
If you’re a window manufacturer, for instance, you could produce an app that virtually overlays the framing and design of your product, that enables the buyer of a new-build home to see exactly how their windows will look once installed.
More than 80 million people use AR monthly according to Threekit, which means that it’s a technology that’s widely accepted and familiar to the general public. It’s worth considering whether it fits your product type and use cases.
Virtual-Reality Showrooms
Showrooms have long been an effective selling tool, but modern tech makes it possible to take this concept into the virtual realm.
Consider building out a VR showroom, and then offering a headset to your customers so they can walk through the space and interact with your products in new, exciting ways. From there, any sales reps on hand can easily continue the conversation.
Interactive Product Configurations
Customization plays a big role in many building materials orders. If that’s the case for your brand, creating an in-depth customizer that potential buyers can use on your website is a worthwhile investment.
This could take the form of an intuitive design tool or project cost calculator. You can make it available on your website or on your in-field reps’ tablets, so they can use it in conversations with customers.
Live Product Demonstrations
Product demos are a classic sales tactic, just as effective today as ever. Your local dealers’ brick-and-mortar locations are great places to hold product demonstrations, DIY seminars, and other kinds of events. Anchor them with Q&A sessions that create dynamic, natural interactions between potential customers and your sales reps.
In short, modern technologies can make a difference to your sales process, in ways both measurable and immeasurable. Don’t be surprised if your sales reps thank you for trying some of these methods: you might find one or more of them to be a boon to your sales strategy.
For a Winning Building Materials Sales Approach in 2023, Harness the Right Tools
Standing pat on sales tools you’ve used for years might not be enough any longer. Just as your building materials brand is constantly looking to innovate your product offerings, you also need to think differently when it comes to addressing your market.
Techniques like creating case studies for the sales team, providing valuable training, increasing collaboration across teams, and embracing cutting-edge tech like AR and VR can all help. However, to strengthen the sales foundation on which your organization is built, there’s no substitute for leveraging-tested, tried, and true platforms to power your business online.
RevBase and Bullseye are the #1 tools for building materials manufacturers who want to revitalize their sales ecosystems.
With a Bullseye-built locator, your reps will be able to develop stronger relationships with the end-consumers that engage with local channel partners and buy your products. RevBase gives your reps access to the digital assets they need, whenever they need them — making it easy to give customers the right answer every time.
Even if your sales reps are currently producing good numbers month after month, you’re likely only scratching the surface of their potential. If you’re ready to take their performance to the next level, see what’s possible with RevBase and learn what you can do with Bullseye today.