Tips to Lower Your Selling Costs
by Canadian Professional Sales Association (CPSA)
Ask your sales reps to confirm appointments and meeting dates beforehand via e-mail or by telephone.
Increase customer contact by having your inside sales or customer service representatives call customers on a regularly scheduled basis.
Integrate direct mail and telephone sales as a means of making better use of your field sales reps.
Equip your salespeople with wireless pagers, PDAs and other devices so they can remain in touch and communicate with customers while on the road.
Arrange with your IT staff to set up remote access capability for your sales reps to allow them to access internal data on customers.
Install a “1-888” number for your company and feature it prominently on all direct mail, voicemail and other company literature.
Purchase a “block” of monthly minutes (e.g. 10,000) from a cellular service provider and set all of your reps on the service
Re-evaluate territories with a view towards reducing territory size but increasing the product line.
Consider adopting videoconferencing and other technologies as alternative options to a face-to-face meeting with clients and to save on travel costs.
Budget for expenses carefully rather than have unlimited reimbursement.
Invest in training your salespeople on how to save time and plan their routes/visits to clients—you’ll save on travel.
Send fewer salespeople to exhibits and trade shows.
Carefully review expense reports.
Set per diem rates for meals and accommodation expenses in major cities or frequent destinations.
Encourage your salespeople to plan their travel in advance to take advantage of discounted fares.
Educate your salespeople to consider what they will need for a particular trip (e.g. a full-service hotel offering all the amenities vs. a moderately priced hotel with limited amenities).
Request your salespeople to use off-airport parking lots which are cheaper and furnish shuttle service to terminals.
Encourage your salespeople to cancel unnecessary hotel reservations prior to 6:00 p.m. local hotel time to avoid “no-show” charges being billed to the company credit card.
Secure corporate travel rates on air travel, accommodations and automobile rental.
Provide reps with a company calling card.
Create a travel expense policy.
Set up your expense report in an Excel spreadsheet format and distribute it to your reps so they can save time by filling it before returning to the office.
Determine which option is more beneficial to your company —supplying a company owned/leased vehicle for each of your salespeople or reimbursing your salespeople for the use of their own vehicles.
Examine your company’s insurance policy and see whether your salespeople are covered while driving a rental car. You may be able to avoid paying the rental company additional daily rates for insurance.
Decline the refueling charge option on automobile rentals unless you expect to use a full tank of gas.
The Canadian Professional Sales Association (CPSA) is a national association comprised of nearly 30,000 business travellers in the sales and marketing professions. CPSA members enjoy special rates on hotels, car rentals, airport parking, insurance, and much more.
