Resellers and Sales Channel Development
Twenty years of experience developing sales channels within both mature and growth verticals.
Whether it be sales development from new products, new channels or simply new customers, E&S Solutions has a depth of experience. For a ten-year period spanning the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s, we worked tirelessly to transition a business from analog to digital products, successfully accomplishing a switch from 80/20 to 20/80 while maintaining over 30% of annual revenues from products less than three years old. With a start-up in wireless, we built new sales channels and $35MM of annual revenues over a 4-year timeframe. As a new entrant in the office supplies industry, we built a credible presence and respected challenge to the incumbents in the “big-box” distribution channels. When it comes to sales channel development we have the experience that can be made to count.
Traditional Vs. Digital Elements for Sales Development
By combining the traditional and digital elements of sales & marketing a small business can gain a competitive advantage over a larger business in local markets.
| Traditional Elements | Digital Elements |
| • Lead generation – cold calling • Industry publications – paid ads • Local radio, TV & print advertising • Yellow pages • Hard copy marketing collateral • Lead qualification – junior sales personnel • Senior management engage qualified leads • Personal customer relationship management | • Search optimized website • Social Media • Blogging • Inbound digital marketing know-how • CRM – sales pipeline & customer management • Email campaigns • Fully integrated IT platform • Reliable electronic customer communications |
Our approach to small business development
For a business with a fully integrated information technology platform and for a business that understands how to effectively use the CRM component of its platform to manage the sales pipeline process, then the fun part of developing a business can take place.
We focus on small to medium size business transformations. Our philosophy is for deployment of an integrated technology platform as the foundation for this process and then to leverage the “tried and trusted” sales development strategies alongside the “new era” digital strategies in order to create a presence in local markets that larger companies are unable to match.
Building relationships is still important.
The “tried and trusted” methods are relationships – face-to-face relationships. The small business owner must never ignore the power of face-to-face meetings, personal interaction, and personalized service. In establishing and deploying an integrated information technology platform, a small business accomplishes no more than getting itself on a level playing field with the larger companies in its field. Being on a level playing field is not enough and owners need to leverage capabilities that cannot be provided by larger organizations.
Large corporations can struggle with customer service.
Large companies typically meet only with their larger customers so their interactions with smaller customers are more commonly handled by call centers, chat lines, email and other web-based messaging systems. Typically, larger organizations don’t want to engage one-on-one because it’s expensive to hire, train and maintain the resources to do so. As a result, they tend to divert calls to web based systems like chat or Q&As at their web portal.
Because larger organizations often fail to manage relationships with all but their largest customers, it can lead to increasingly high levels of customer dissatisfaction that can be exploited by smaller organizations leveraging technology effectively.
Small businesses can develop personal customer relationships.
Small businesses have the ability to provide superior and personalized customer service and, when necessary, quick customer access to ownership and senior management who have a vested interest in satisfactory negotiations and problem solving. Alongside the service and communication elements routinely available from larger organizations, that are enabled for small business through deployment of an integrated technology platform, a powerful combination is created that leads to competitive advantages over larger and less flexible organizations
Small and Medium Business Enterprises
By combining the traditional and digital elements of sales & marketing a small business can gain a competitive advantage over a larger business in local markets. In demonstrating access to business intelligence and know-how of its industry, a small business can develop authority in its field and trust with its target audience. In successfully establishing these credentials, it can go on to successfully develop its business in the modern digital era.