Facilitating AD Field Marketing Summits (FMS)

Many AD affiliates have shared that they love the idea of FMS but the tracking, reporting and day to day management can be very time consuming. We’d like to share with you how AD member service provider SMP helps AD affiliates with their FMS process and much more.

Plan, Track And Report FMS, JMA And SSP Activities With SMP’s AD Workflow

Sales Management Plus is a leading distribution CRM and business intelligence application with specific benefits for and support of AD members. SMP is a “cloud-based,” application that integrates with your ERP system to leverage important information such as accounts, contacts, historical transaction data, open orders and quotes/bids. Additionally, SMP combines your CRM and ERP data with award-winning BI powered by Qlik® for powerful data analysis and visualization.

All of this adds up to a robust solution for AD member to plan, track and report FMS, JMA and SSP activities.

Effective Field Marketing Summit (FMS) Planning and Execution

A Field Marketing Summit (FMS) is your chance to have a face-to-face meeting between your organization and your Supplier Plan Partners. The purpose of the meeting is to bring your teams together to establish sales targets, goals and timetables. When the FMS works well, it is a driver of revenue and growth. Planning also creates opportunities for new competitive differentiation by building tighter relationships with your partners as you work together to complete your mutual goals. Unfortunately, many distributors find it very difficult to prepare effectively for an FMS meeting and to execute and track on plans made during the FMS.

Some AD members approach their FMS sessions as a simple box to check off, but with the right technology, you can focus your planning around meaningful and actionable outcomes. The key is to minimize the amount of effort you expend in planning and maximize your results. You can do this with SMP with self-serve access to data so that you can generate new insights during the FMS without waiting for IT support.

Using SMP for FMS creates a unique advantage for AD members who are able to leverage their own business intelligence and data toward advanced business planning. Because your suppliers are a step removed from the end user sale, you have an opportunity to guide them with discussions around new product launches, Sales Stimulator Programs, sales and customer training, creating targeted customer lists, planning for marketing and developing new sales and marketing promotions.

SMP Supports FMS, JMAs and SSPs

SMP has helped AD members in many ways, but here are five (5) common areas of improvement in their processes.

1. Finding meaningful topics to discuss with suppliers. SMP puts your sales and CRM data right in your hands with easy-to-use data visualizations. This allows you to have deeper discussions with your suppliers around specific customer needs and behaviors. Your FMS and JMA process will be more targeted because you will have access to actionable data.
2. Sharing insights into your local markets. You have a wealth of customer-level data that can help your FMS process. SMP combines your CRM, ERP and business intelligence tools into one solution so that you can explore simple and complex data to find hidden data relationships through easy-to-use drag and drop interfaces.
3. Executing Joint Marketing Agreements (JMAs). Being able to share and collaborate on data insights helps as well with the top-down approach to well-designed JMAs. Whether you use FMS or JMA processes, SMP allows you to create specific sales and marketing plans at all levels in your organization to drive tactical execution and measurement. SMP is key to making sure you generate alignment on your team resulting from your plans, assign and track accountability, measure results and report back results.
4. Driving success with Sales Stimulator Programs (SSPs). SMP makes your SSPs much more successful. Take something as simple as a direct mail program. How much time does it take you to profile lists, assign follow-up calls and track the results of a single campaign? With SMP, this process can be implemented in just a few clicks, in minutes not hours or days.
5. Tracking and measuring for effectiveness. Measurement and accountability are the key ingredients to successful implementations of your action plans. Your CRM system helps you maintain focus on your goals and communicate to your teams and your suppliers.

Feedback from AD Members Like You

Tim Fleming, Vice President of Purchasing & Marketing of ESE and Lisa Wright, Operations Manager of ESE recently gave us some great feedback as AD members:

“SMP has proven invaluable to the success of our Field Marketing Summit.  By tasking our sales force with identifying customer targets to discuss with manufacturers at our FMS event, we are able to log these targets into SMP and easily monitor and evaluate throughout the year.  SMP’s dashboards provide an accountability, accuracy, and efficiency that was not easily attained in prior years and we couldn’t imagine conducting a successful FMS without it.”

They specifically highlighted the following benefits.

1. Ease of use. You don’t have to run dozens of reports and then manually manage spreadsheets, charts and lists. This is especially important when you do this process for every vendor every month. Without SMP, the process is very cumbersome.
2. Updated and manageable. Once the data is loaded it into SMP, it becomes easy to track and manage or analyze with SMP’s built in business intelligence of dashboards. The data is updated every day, not just monthly. You have much better tracking and reporting.
3. Accountability. Keeping your sales reps accountable is a huge advantage.  SMP gives you better follow-up and helps keep everyone on track.
4. Better and flexible formats and visualizations. The data is presented in formats that are easy to use for AD members. Also, SMP’s built in BI and dashboards make it easy to collect and explore data.

Dan Knapp, Director of Sales at Standard Electric Supply Co. hosts annual FMS meetings to develop action plans with manufacturers for the upcoming year. Then throughout the year, account managers update their progress against SMP activities to make sure they are tracking toward their goals.

“Throughout the year, our account managers update progress on their strategic action plans in the SMP activity until the goal is achieved. SMP activities provide focus for our account managers as well as visibility for both the Standard Electric sales management team and the AD manufacturer partners.  Every quarter Standard Electric’s sales management team provides a summary to the AD manufacturer to ensure all parties are coordinated in our sales efforts. “

“To ensure we are focused on the strategy set forth during these FMS planning sessions, Standard Electric uses our CRM, Sales Management Plus (SMP), and its activity function to track progress.  Every Standard Electric account manager is required enter their strategic action plans developed at the FMS as a SMP activity by customer and manufacturer. “

CRM Built for Distribution

Of course, what works well for your individual FMS and JMA planning works well for your entire business. According to the Forbes Insight’s report, “Time to Get on Board with Self-Service,” 69% of businesses with self-serve access to their CRM and BI data say it helps them identify new business opportunities.

Distribution sales is unique and SMP is designed specifically for wholesale distributors. SMP integrates with your ERP application to leverage important information such as accounts, contacts, and transactional data. SMP includes native mobile applications, business intelligence and built-in marketing tools to help you grow your business.

Special Discount for AD Members

AD members receive a 10% discount on their first year and are eligible for enterprise licensing. To learn more, please visit www.goSMP.com or contact sales@gosmp.com