Imagine the KYKLO story as an award winning movie. Some might describe the plot as “customer finds a website, customer loves information, customer buys products.” While in the simplest terms all this is true, there’s a whole lot more going on. The webshop gets lots of attention, but KYKLO is designed to be much more. KYKLO is a critical distributor sales tool.

Product Specialists are an important part of the distributor sales equation. The NAW book, The Distributor Specialist: Customer Champion, Profit Generator, outlines the value a specialist brings to organizations. By focusing sales efforts in a segmented slice of the distributor’s business, they move the business forward through all aspects of the sales process. Being part of the sales process, KYKLO becomes another tool in the specialist’s workchest. Let’s look at three examples:

Speed of insides sales and customer support responses to customer questions is viewed as a critical measure of the service level provided for customers. Assisting in the selection of a wide range of technologies and thousands of permutations of these products often requires years of experience. It’s not uncommon for customers to be disconnected and passed on to the specialist. The result is lost time and sometimes lost opportunities. A specialist investing time to train inside sales on keyword searches within the KYKLO system amplifies the inside sales group’s customer-facing product expertise. And, once the product is identified complete information can be emailed to the customer for future reference.

Customers often judge a company’s quotation by the content provided. Sadly, many organizations still send out proposals with a supplier catalog number and little differentiating data. What’s missing? Descriptions, product data, and technical specifications top the list of deficiencies. Customers considering a couple of options are especially soured by these ERP system proposals. A simple solution comes with the insertion of a link to the product on the KYKLO system as a standard for inside sales. Specialists assist by encouraging the practice with both inside and outside salespersons.

As stated earlier, specialists strive to maximize the growth of their lines. This includes some of the ancillary products tied to their main products. This concept of “add-on” selling has been rattled around distributor circles for years and using KYKLO’s suggested product tool has the potential to further expand businesses. Scott Reid, Sick Specialist for Norwood MA based Gibson Engineering, made this comment:

“Nearly all of the sensors provided by Sick use some kind of reflector, mounting bracket, adapter or cable. Customers often forget to pick one and spend hours modifying something else to do the job. And, while our customer service team tries to remind them to buy, many customers just can’t visualize why they need them. Gibson’s webstore does a really good job of suggesting all the options, including these axillary products. Pushing out links to the customer moves us one step closer to capturing all the business.”

Moving away from some of these more straight forward examples, specialists and their management can use KYKLO’s integration with Google Analytics to better focus selling efforts in the future. The tools allows the user to check on which products customers search for whether they buy online or through traditional means. Using Scott’s Sick product line, here’s how this might work.

Review of customer searches reveals a high percentage of customers are not only interested in SICK industrial sensor but also in one of their safety lasers. Armed with this information, salespeople might be trained to “blitz” their territory with probing questions and conversations tied to the laser system. Sales volume increases whether through the webstore or traditional purchase methods. Everybody wins.

These are just a few of the best practices available when the entirety of the KYKLO system is put to work for your company. The first KYKLO user’s group meeting scheduled at AHTD in Orlando will be a great forum for learning about still more progressive ways to apply digitalization in your business.

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