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For too many years now the product support sales staff has been assigned a geographic territory and told to go sell. Many dealerships still work under this principle.

The trouble with this approach is that it doesn’t show with any precision who the PSSRs are calling on and what they are discussing. Lacking this information, many dealership execs have questioned the effectiveness of their product support sales people. The old adage that the shingle sells is still, unfortunately, a common view.

Then along came the call report. The call report, when used, is viewed by many salesmen as a tool that shows them that the dealership doesn’t trust them.

In many cases the salesmen’s view was correct. The dealership didn’t trust them. This was not due to distrust for the individual salesman; rather it was because the dealership found the expense of the product support sales staff high relative to the perceived results.

Then in the midst of this came, “Oh, by the way, take these parts out to the customer.” Result: Product support salesmen became high-cost delivery people.

Since the beginning of the ’90s the more enlightened and progressive dealerships have been assigning product support salesmen to specific accounts. A typical PSSR has between 100 and 150 different accounts in his territory. Now the dealership started to have more consistent and measurable customer coverage. There was still, however, a need for call reports.

Product support salesmen need assistance in managing their territories. Most of them keep records of their own to determine what the customer needs and what was last discussed. Traditionally, however, they were still hesitant to share that information with the dealership.

With the arrival of good customer-relationship tools, salesmen are now viewing the call report for what it was originally intended to be-a tool to help them sell. Now we can get to work.

Product support salesmen also should be using laptop computers to manage their territories and accounts. If they aren’t, they are missing the boat. The information on their laptops should relate their customers to the products and services the dealership sells.

Such a laptop entry, for example, would include a full customer profile (name, address and personal information on each key contact), the machines the customer owns and operates, monthly purchase history (by commodity for parts and repair type for service) and call history. At the end of each day, the salesman should use a dial-up connection to update the dealership’s computer so it is synchronized with the information in his laptop.

Customer retention is the lifeblood of any business. Armed with these tools a salesman can see in real time if there are any changes in the customer’s buying patterns. He can see if the account is a slow payer. He can track his own success at selling specific services or parts. In other words he can manage the territory from which he makes his living.

With a little creativity and systems work, the dealership can show, for each of the salesmen’s accounts, open work orders, outstanding backorders and new machine purchases. Isn’t this information beneficial in keeping the salesman up to date when he’s in front of the customer? I don’t know how often I have seen a salesman call on a customer only to be blindsided with a complaint about an outstanding backorder or a repair taking longer than it should. Wouldn’t it be nice if the salesman had this information at his fingertips when these kinds of questions arise?

Last year this magazine ran a four-part series on the product support sales group that covers everything from territory setup to compensation programs. These articles are an excellent guide for every dealership. If you missed this series, you can still access the individual articles by logging on to www.aednet.org and doing a search on the CED magazine link.

Now that we have had at least a year following that outline we can now move to the next logical step: a good customer-relationship management system. There are many available. Choose one and get going. Your salesmen will thank you, and customers will appreciate a talented salesman who has all the information he needs right at his fingertips.

The time is now. Seize the day.