How to Reduce Selling Agent Expenses with Your Online Store

There are some who still want to work, there are some who dream, but it’s a challenge that we, as entrepreneurs, have and we really have to find a solution.

Good people can come in for interviews, but the process of training them, teaching them your products, teaching them how to talk, how to get new colleagues in front of customers, talking about your products and getting them to buy them, is very important.

It’s a process that only those who have lived it, only those who are working hard to bring new people into the company, know very well.

You learn, over time, how much it costs in this respect and how much time is allocated to the process.

Read also: How to grow your team – the hiring and retention process [Podcast]

2. 24 out of 7 availability

When we want certain products or services, as customers, we always want to order them when we want them.

Whereas, if you have people in the field, they have a schedule. It’s absolutely normal.

But we know how costly or how inefficient some trips to the home or office of the potential or existing customer are. And we also know that many existing customers have already started placing orders online, or that there are many reseller entrepreneurs who place their orders in the evening or on weekends.

It’s more efficient to have an online store or to give the possibility to your customers, your sellers or your distributors to place orders when they want, for what amount they want or to delay the cart a little bit, to add more products.

It’s a super great opportunity for you as a business to grow faster, give more options to your customers and address a much larger market.

Read also: What expenses to expect for an online store

3. Automating the sales process

This is another aspect that matters a great deal.

Most of the time we know that it would be ideal to sell as much as possible, to come to our customer, to our resellers, to our business partner with as wide a range of products as possible.

But from experience told by other customers, other entrepreneurs, what happens on the ground when people go to make product presentations or when they go to sell?

They sell the portfolio or the best offerings at that time and sometimes they forget to promote other products. Related products or seasonal products or what another partner, another customer in another region, another area has asked for.

You’re missing business opportunities, because you may have a person who at the time, if he goes to a big customer, with potential, still doesn’t feel like coming up with suggestions, even if he’s bonused.

When you automate these processes and present to the customer digitally all the options that are available, all the accessories for certain products and what else is new, they’re simply out in the open or you can make them more visible and notify them by email.

4. Personalize the shopping experience

If we go back to the previous points, when we know what the customer has bought, when we see on the report, or every human in an online store space can see what any customer in any geographic area has bought, you can get a boost in growing your business.

Personalization is 1 to 1.

Indeed, relationships are made with people. But you can come in with a lot more input, you can know what the customer bought last year, you can come in with advice and recommendations automatically.

Here we’re not going to ignore and we’re not going to give away people, because we’re looking at what we can do with people who are already in the field, how we can bring them into the office, really form a team and remotely deal with customers, call them, email them and have a closer relationship from that point of view.

Read also: What is involved in opening an online store

5. Data analysis and reporting

Classically, sales agents have phones or tablets with software that takes orders, which are sent to a control point.

Those apps, which handle such actions, are usually licensed per user. And the costs are extremely high, and rarely does anyone look at the overall level.

Through an online store you can see at a glance general sales reports, city reports, product reports and sales agent reports.

You, as an administrator, can see in real time what’s going on in your business without asking for reports, without asking anyone to say what happened.

You can make better and faster decisions to grow your business.

6. Email marketing and order taking

After your customer has purchased certain products, an online shop’s system at unosoft automatically sends them a confirmation email.

After a period of time may come up with other recommendations or moreover, with the subscriptions – You know that certain products are bought on a recurring basis.

There are customers who only buy certain categories of products or certain products at a frequency of time, and so things happen much faster.

Also in this area of automation we can categorize this action in the area of marketing, because everything happens on email.

Entrepreneurs read emails, reply to emails, send emails, buy based on an email received from partners or different suppliers.

Your business grows even more when new customers come in daily, weekly, monthly.

7. Business growth

It’s important for people to discover, to see who you are, to see what you can help them with. Having presence – visibility through SEO helps you tremendously in this respect.

If you don’t have an online presence and if your products aren’t listed, your chances of reaching new customers decrease.

Read also: How to create an online store and tips about marketing & SEO

8. Visibility

I’m absolutely sure that you, as an administrator or sales agent or manager of a sales team, have had or know of scenarios with various message exchanges on WhatsApp, or messages simply between your colleagues and customers for new orders, for order updates, for order cancellations etc.

The presence of a business in social media matters a lot; it creates a greater connection between your brand and your customers or potential customers, because they simply want to follow you.

Studies show that most people who follow a brand, after a period of time want to become its customer.

Then, after the visibility part on SEO, social media is vital because people can discover you, see who you are, subscribe to your email, receive news, information about you.

9. Stocks

Depending on several factors, the size of a business, its niche, the decision of the administrator or managers, there are businesses that work with local, regional or national stock.

But there have been many discussions in which a customer in a particular city or region has wanted products that are not in stock there. These could be brought in 3-4 days, but the process depends on their size, pallets, transportation and logistics, operational, and so on.

What happens if a customer has an order for a larger stock of products and sells to other B2B people or other factories?

Again you lose an opportunity because if someone else has stock, they will deliver faster. Things happen faster for the one who serves the customer faster.

Managing a unit stock in national stock also helps you tremendously in the area of reports.

You, as a sales manager or as an administrator, can see in real time what the stocks are and how the products are moving, sales in different cities, top product categories, products on sale, products out of stock and how you could destock them.

These aspects matter too – you just have a bigger view and it’s all much more centralized.

10. Reduced infrastructure costs

Besides the hiring part, getting people into the market through training, laptops, tablets, cars, per diems and all that, is a cost that online can lower extremely quickly.

You can scale much faster because it’s super affordable to manage an online store, it’s affordable to train future employees, establish procedures and have each of these people see the customer history.

Also read: Structuring your business, from chaos to controlled planning

If you’re concerned about your available budget and want to cut costs, today you just saw 10 ways an online shop can help you do that.

Heed the advice, rethink your business strategy and make the most of unosoft’s features to scale quickly, without mistakes.

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Passionate about entrepreneurship and eCommerce, I started my online activity in 2000.
Together with my team I have helped over 3,000 companies grow their business on the unosoft platform.

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