Here’s a little circular logic that’s worth thinking about. Increase sales by increasing selling time by decreasing non-selling time. It’s really very simple. A sales guru put it this way, “Sales people should sell, and everybody else should do everything else.” First let me explain and then I’ll tell you about a way to do this with GoldMine.
In the time it takes a salesperson to merge a boilerplate cover letter, select the print materials to go into the package, print the label or envelope, put it all together and put it in the mail, they could have made some 2, 3 or more sales calls. So, the question is, do you pay your sales people to do clerical work (they’re so good at) or do you pay them to stay on the phone while an administrative person handles the task for a whole group of sales people?
If you have enough sales people doing enough fulfillment each day, you should take a closer look at GoldMine’s Literature Request and Fulfillment features. They are intended to give sales people more time to sell, by giving them a simple way to delegate literature fulfillment.
You start by creating a “pick list” within the Literature Fulfillment Center. (Open the Literature Fulfillment Center from the “View” pull-down menu.) You can add merge documents such as cover letters, as well as print materials that get pulled from your literature shelves. You can include forms, labels, envelopes, etc. By doing a good job of classifying and organizing the list, it is much easier for users to find the items they need to be fulfilled.
After the literature list is created, users can schedule “Literature Requests” from the same drop-down menu that they use to schedule all activities. Active users of this feature will want to add the icon/macro to their toolbar. From the scheduling box users can select the right cover letter, if called for, and simply click off the “literature list” items. They can indicate whether those items are routed to a printer or fax and designate the person to handle the task and when it is to be sent, can include an alarm and requesting an automatic “RSVP” confirmation when they’ve completed it. They can even write a note about special handling instructions.
The person who is trained to handle fulfillment will see in the Literature Fulfillment Center all the documents and requests they have outstanding and pending for that day, week, month and next month. They can also see the jobs they’ve completed. There are several tools in the Center to help them efficiently handle their job.
GoldMine will increase selling time and ultimately sales, if you take the time upfront to configure the Literature Fulfillment Center and learn how to use it.
