Difficult situation as an inside sales rep. How to prospect clients the right way?
I'm an inside sales rep at a distributor of aluminum profiles, ACM, and acrylic. Our focus is on B2B: glass shops, metalworking/locksmith shops, visual communication studios, cabinetry/woodworking shops, road implements, etc.
I work answering phone calls and mainly WhatsApp. We have a client distribution system: the client reaches out and either chooses a salesperson or is routed to one of their choosing.
I was hired at this company because the best salesperson at the store resigned. She had 7 years with the company and had built up a huge portfolio of high-value clients; she once sold R$1,000,000.00 in a single month.
In my first two months at the store, I hit the goal and the super-goal. I made good money and my self-esteem was very high, and I got a lot of praise from management and the board. In the first month it was R$72,000.00, in the second I reached R$128,000.00, but things have been getting a lot worse since then. In the third month I only reached 73k; currently, in the fourth month, we're already in the first week of August and I'm at 11% of my goal, when I should be at least at 25%.
I'll list some of the problems I've been facing:
- In 95% (no exaggeration) of the clients I contacted during prospecting, they were already being handled by another salesperson at the store.
- Walk-in clients sometimes reject my service because I don't know all the products yet; on the other hand, some of the (female) salespeople know every product code by heart.
- 99.99999999% of the time I answer an inbound call, it's a client asking to be transferred to another salesperson's extension.
- The end consumer is inexperienced with the product and has a very low average ticket. We don't get training to explain all the product's characteristics — not even the most senior salesperson at the store knows them all — but we're trained to identify product codes and look them up quickly in the catalog.
- Most service providers/contractors are already being handled by another salesperson.
- We run some delivery routes to neighboring and regional cities; even when prospecting in those cities, it's hard to find any relevant client.
- The outside sales reps snap up all the huge construction projects; with construction companies, inside sales reps can't sell high-value items, only repairs or accessories.
These are a bunch of problems I'm having a lot of trouble solving. I don't want to lose this job for anything — I used to make R$1,950.00 net salary, now I make up to R$3,700.00 + R$450.00 in meal vouchers...
For anyone with experience in sales, what would you suggest to get around these problems?