For one, activity based costing techniques can help identify profitable and unprofitable customers. A relatively new concept called customer relationship management can also help. Distributors can use CRM to track customers purchasing needs and buying patterns in an effort to develop and refine marketing and sales approaches to targeted customer groups, says Skinner. In its most basic form, CRM can be achieved by using historical sales order data to analyze how individual and groups of customers buy. Order management software packages allow access to sales history and are available from many software providers.
Small distributors can take advantage of other technologies, as well.
One thing they can do, says Epner, is link their computer system to their best customers systems without going through the Internet. This allows the customer direct access to the distributor s inventory. To replace me, another distributor has to do the same thing, and many aren t willing to do that, says Epner. I made it easy for them to be a part of my team and that s the value. A simpler approach is to use your contact manager program in different ways.