Many consumer goods companies rely on a combination of sales channels to sell and service their trade accounts which include independent distributors, third-party brokers, internal sales forces, and Direct Store Delivery (DSD).

Here’s some information about DSD and how using a vertical CRM solution and mobile apps can work seamlessly together to boost productivity and give you the best efficiency and benefits possible.

What is Direct Store Delivery (DSD)?

Direct Store Delivery refers to sales and delivery reps visit each account daily or at least once a week and deliver products directly to the retail store itself. It’s an alternative way of thinking to using a centralized distribution model and retailer’s distribution centers. Today DSD often means more than drivers dropping off goods at the outlet.

This is particularly the case when you’re talking about items that have a high amount of shifting demand from consumers and that are going to move at high volume. The model enables profitable growth, sales engagement at the point of sale, and service excellence.

The advantages to using this approach includes the following:

• Retail Shelf Space Control and Boosted Sales-By being able to get items with a high turnover to the retail shelf faster, you can often increase sales because there’s going to be less time where there’s just nothing on the shelf. Competition for retail shelf space is intensifying, driven by a growing number of competitive products. The information gathered using monitoring tools can be used to generate insights on consumer behavior.
• Decreased Inventory Carrying Costs-By having a shorter chain, you’ll eliminate some of the costs associated with having items sitting in centers where consumers can’t even find them anyway. This all leads to wider margins through increased efficiency.

• Expanded coverage– Service an ever growing large customer base from hundreds of thousands of outlets ranging from small independent outlets, c-stores, to big chain retailers.
• Increased Flexibility for Pricing and Sales-If the numbers are making a promotion look like the right thing to do, then you can take advantage of either pricing or sale options more effectively.

Route to Market System

To make all of this happen, you need a system with the industry specific functionality and capability of handling it all for you out of the box. Using a vertical CRM companies can benefit from rapid implementation and ongoing support for new business processes. You can increase your understanding of demand dynamics and improve your ability to react almost instantaneously to signals observed directly from the shelf at retail locations.

It’s often possible to perform actions right on a mobile device to create invoices, process credit cards and inventory checks.

• This helps to cut down on errors and increase speed, productivity, and efficiency of your routes. Part of the upshot of this is that you can sell inventory right from the truck and process orders without having to worry about doing warehouse fulfillment.
• Sales reps are able to pitch the suggested order with specific pricing for different promotions.
• It’s possible to sign for deliveries right from the screen on the mobile phone as well, and it’s also possible to use just about any mobile phone or mobile device that you want.

When companies adopt a vertical CRM solution and use it to transform legacy processes through improved execution and they can cover their market in new ways that improves service to customers while increasing sales.

Get a demo to learn how a modern DSD solution can help you.