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How to Provide Exceptional Sales Support for Your Ecommerce Business

Aleksandra Tadrzak

21 min read

Jul 15, 2024

The future of retail is online. Ecommerce has drastically changed how people shop, with global sales figures growing each year.

In 2024, it’s estimated that consumers will spend $6.3 trillion on ecommerce globally. For B2B transactions, ecommerce is even more valuable. A Gartner report estimates that by 2025, 80% of all B2B sales will be closed over digital channels.

If you run an ecommerce business, you know that a thriving sales pipeline is essential for continued success. And the only way you can improve the performance of your sales team is by providing them with robust sales support.

This article is your complete guide to sales support in ecommerce. We cover the definition of sales support, its various types, the roles it plays, and how your business can increase its impact with technology. Read on to learn how efficient sales support can increase your revenue and secure your business’s future.

What is sales support?

Sales support is an umbrella term that covers a range of company resources, from marketing materials and sales scripts to a dedicated support team working to empower sales reps. It encompasses any activity that streamlines sales workflows and ensures your sales department works efficiently and effectively.

According to Salesforce’s State of Sales Report for 2024, sales reps only spend 28% of their work week directly engaged in selling. The rest of their time is spent on preparatory work and follow-ups, keeping them away from closing new deals.

This is where sales support staff and resources come in. They provide value to the organization by freeing sales reps’ time by simplifying other non-critical tasks.

Why is sales support important?

It should go without saying that sales support is vital for the health of your ecommerce business.

However, boosting the efficiency of your sales team isn’t the only purpose sales support serves in an organization. Sales support also benefits marketing and customer service and improves the overall customer experience (CX).

Here’s how sales support makes a difference to your ecommerce business in several key areas:

Sales

To close deals, sales reps need to spend time interacting with clients. Efficient sales support lets them do just that. They handle all administrative tasks, field initial customer queries, and create opportunities for sales teams to generate more revenue.

Marketing

Sales support ensures the sales and marketing departments are on the same page. This synergy is a powerful positive force in your organization to increase revenue and reduce costs.

Around 70% of all created B2B marketing materials go unused. Sales support initiatives can minimize these wasted resources by ensuring that marketing collaterals are synergistic with sales, relevant for your customer base, and, therefore, more likely to be used.

Sales support also helps marketing teams develop more effective strategies. By gathering customer data, conducting analytics, and studying market trends and key metrics, sales support staff can identify business opportunities, offer actionable insights, and help develop a well-informed and carefully considered marketing strategy.

With a data-driven marketing strategy, you will know the best way to appeal to your customer base. An engaged audience increases brand awareness and revenue.

Customer service

In a fiercely competitive marketplace, there is often very little to distinguish one company from the other. When there isn’t much to differentiate ecommerce companies, most customers will make a decision based on which company offers the smoothest CX.

In a PwC survey from 2023, 37% of surveyed consumers said they left a brand after a negative experience. Thankfully, sales support can improve customer satisfaction, reducing churn and increasing loyalty.

With sales reps busy working on new leads, sales support staff can handle inquiries from existing customers. Providing prompt responses after customers have made a purchase rewards their decision and increases customer loyalty. And because loyal customers are the ones who also make repeat purchases, the role of sales support in customer service links back to its prime directive of boosting sales.

The role of sales support in ecommerce

Your sales support staff is there to do anything that your company’s full-time sales reps cannot do. This includes routine tasks like sending emails and scheduling meetings, as well as more critical pursuits like identifying sales opportunities and finding potential customers.

With such vital responsibilities, you will get the best results when you hire dedicated sales support executives and specialists. Those adept at research can focus on discovering and qualifying leads for the sales team. Those with the strongest communication skills can provide post-sales customer support.

Succeeding in a sales support role requires some key skills and qualifications:

In-depth knowledge of sales and marketing in your niche
Several years of professional experience working in sales or marketing
Strong attention to detail
Ability to conduct intensive research
Social and interpersonal skills

These qualities help sales support executives succeed in the many different roles they are expected to play. The more qualified they are, the more likely they will positively impact your business.

7 key functions of sales support

Your business can make significant strides with the right mix of sales support executives, software, and workflows.

Sales support benefits ecommerce businesses through several functions that, when conducted effectively, boost your company in crucial areas. Let’s take a closer look at these functions and explore what they entail.

1. Lead generation

Generating and preparing leads is arguably the single most important function of a sales support team. Sales support can improve the efficiency of the sales pipeline by tracking potential customers and leveraging automation to follow up on leads.

For example, sales support can conduct cold email campaigns to discover new buyers or uncover unaddressed customer needs before passing on the most promising leads to the sales team.

Sales support teams can use these to discover new leads:

Networking platforms like LinkedIn
Social media platforms
Client and company websites (for B2B)
Data mining campaigns
Email campaigns

Sales support can contact leads directly and handle the first few interactions to prepare them for a sales pitch. Once the potential customer is primed for conversion, they can hand over the lead to the sales rep.

When sales support and sales reps are on the same page, it boosts your company's revenue. A report in the Harvard Business Review showed that implementing a formal sales process leads to 18% more revenue growth.

Sales support can also help train and onboard new sales reps by bringing them up to speed on effective sales opportunities and strategies.

2. Data management

Sales is a numbers game, and winning in the digital age means knowing how to manage your data. Sales support teams can greatly boost sales reps’ efficiency by performing efficient data management and analysis. Robust data management also leads to clear communication and information sharing between sales and sales support—a significant asset to any organization.

While necessary, data management can be a time-consuming exercise if left to your sales reps. Documenting sales metrics, updating customer databases, and building customer profiles are all tasks that keep sellers away from the crucial job of converting leads and generating revenue.

3. Customer service

Building lasting, positive relationships with your customers is the key to driving repeat purchases. That’s why ensuring high-quality customer service is one of the key functions of sales support.

Your company’s sales support team must work with new customers by directing them to the right product and assisting them with any inquiries before and after they make a purchase.

Sales support in customer service enhances CX on both sides of the purchasing decision. After a customer completes a purchase, sales support can initiate interactions to collect product feedback and other helpful information. If a customer wishes to cancel their order or request a refund, sales support can still contribute toward a positive CX by guiding them through the process.

Through its customer service function, sales support also achieves its primary goal of boosting sales. The data gathered during pre-sale and post-sale customer interactions is vital in increasing conversion and customer satisfaction rates. This information allows sales reps to tailor each sales pitch to each customer.

Personalization is at the heart of success in both CX and sales. A LinkedIn survey of B2B decision-makers and sales executives found that 77% of buyers want sellers to personalize their sales pitches, clearly demonstrating the importance of integrating customer service, sales support, and sales.

4. Administrative support

Sales support is meant to assist with all the behind-the-scenes activities that drive a successful sales process, including processing order information. Once a customer orders online or over the phone, sales support enters their information into the company’s order management system. This benefits the sales team by relieving them from the responsibility of managing and tracking the orders after every successful sale. It also benefits customers by ensuring a smooth logistic process so they receive their orders on time.

Another way that sales support adds value in an administrative capacity is by helping the sales team prepare for important pitches. Sales support can handle tasks like preparing a presentation for a client meeting, creating sales materials like brochures, and compiling all the information and documents needed to personalize the sales pitch.

5. Sales planning and market research

Sales support helps build the strategy that your sales reps will follow. This includes reporting on market conditions, tracking customer sentiment, and conducting competitor analysis to identify future sales opportunities. Along with helping sales reps prepare for customer interactions, this function of sales support also helps in the process of lead discovery and generation.

Armed with the market research information from sales support, the sales reps will be in a much better position to pursue prospects and convert them into customers. Yet again, sales support proves its worth as a way to boost your company’s sales figures.

6. Product training

More sales will lead to long-term growth and success for your company. As your business expands, you may offer your customers a broader range of products and services. At this stage, if your sales reps aren’t up to date on your latest offerings and their features, it could slow down or even entirely halt your company’s growth trajectory.

While sales reps are focused on connecting with prospects and converting leads, they may not have the time to refresh their knowledge of your company’s range of products.

The product training function makes sales support resources the go-to source of information for sales reps. Sales support teams accomplish this by compiling product information, putting together marketing materials, and writing product manuals for every new item that the company adds to its catalog.

7. Active market communication

Brand recognition is essential to increasing sales and maintaining healthy revenue. Consumers are much more likely to purchase products or services from your company if someone in their social circle has spoken positively about it on social media or in person. Making sure customers hear good things about your company is your marketing department’s responsibility, but the sales support team can assist them in achieving this objective.

Sales support can help create targeted marketing and advertising strategies by sharing insights about customer demographics. These efforts go toward building brand awareness among the company’s target audience, making it more likely that high-value prospects will have heard about the company by the time a sales rep contacts them with an offer.

These seven key functions of sales support underscore just how important it is to your organization’s overall success. Whether your business is aiming for improved efficiency in key areas or simply wants to increase overall revenue, a strong sales support framework can help you accomplish those goals.

The main components of sales support

The wide-ranging functions of sales support we just covered illustrate just how multidimensional its impact can be. Sales support is a broad term that covers processes and assets that enable superior sales performance and CX.

These can be grouped into two major categories: the employees in the sales support team and the software and other resources they have at their disposal. Respectively, these two categories are known as the labor component and material component.

Sales support staff (labor component)

It’s crucial to assemble your sales support team with careful consideration. This is not the type of role you can easily fill with entry-level hires.

The ideal sales support executive is preferably an employee from within the company who is well-versed with the current selling strategies, the company’s offerings, and the sales team’s strengths and weaknesses. When appointing a leader for the sales support team, you should look for an experienced professional who has demonstrated a clear understanding of your company’s sales strategy and has a proven track record of successful sales.

Your business objectives are another critical consideration when assembling a sales support team. You will have to hire specialists depending on what you want to achieve with your sales support operations. Different companies will have different requirements. One business might need sales support staff skilled in record keeping and file management, and another might prioritize hiring professionals skilled in customer service. A company experiencing rapid expansion may need expert data analysts for sales support.

Based on your organization's needs, put together the right combination of sales support employees and prepare them for their responsibilities by giving them clear, measurable targets to hit.

Material components of sales support

There’s no doubt that your sales support team will be the driving force behind your success. But they are only as effective as the tools you equip them with.

While performing their multifaceted roles, sales support executives use a range of tools to increase their efficiency. These include software solutions, company assets, and physical materials that will help streamline sales operations.

Let’s look at some commonly used material components of sales support:

Customer relationship management (CRM) software

Sales support teams must have convenient access to vast amounts of customer data to develop effective selling strategies. CRM software is the ideal platform for sales support staff to store and access customer information, upload new details, and conduct research to increase the efficiency of the sales pipeline.

Email automation

While social media is a growing channel for ecommerce sales, email is still a strong force for customer outreach. The LinkedIn State of Sales Report for 2022 stated that two-thirds of customers in the US and Canada prefer to be contacted over email.

However, individually contacting leads or responding to frequently asked questions over email can become tiresome and time-consuming. Instead, sales support uses email automation software to streamline customer interactions. The software can automatically send out first-contact and follow-up emails, freeing up the sales team’s valuable time.

Some companies go even further and implement text analysis software for customer emails to gain further insights for the benefit of sales and customer service departments.

Sales force automation (SFA) software

Emails are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to automating tasks in sales support. SFA is sometimes included as a feature in certain CRM software and can also be implemented as an independent software solution.

SFA software is designed to reduce the risk of manual errors, save time, and increase the efficiency of sales teams. This is achieved by implementing tools that automatically nurture leads, perform data entry, compile reports, schedule appointments, and route customers to the correct sales representatives.

Sales scripts

Sales scripts can be extensively detailed, with predetermined responses based on customer responses, or more like a general outline for customer interactions. They often fall between the two extremes, including broad brand-specific guidelines and more focused product-specific selling points.

Sales support should supply sales reps with effective scripts and optimize them to increase engagement with target customers.

Sales playbooks

While sales scripts are tailored for selling a single product, sales playbooks are master documents containing all the information a sales rep needs to convert leads. This includes an outline of all your company's sales processes, procedures, and best practices, detailed data analysis of sales figures and customer profiles, and a map of the buyer’s journey for your various customer personas.

Sales pitch content

Ecommerce companies that focus on B2B sales are used to making sales pitches to prospective clients. As we’ve already mentioned, clients are looking for personalized content in these sales pitches, which requires extensive knowledge of their wants and needs.

The best way to demonstrate this knowledge and leave a memorable impression after a sales pitch is to bring bespoke marketing materials to the meeting. Sales support can prepare presentations, printouts, handouts, and any additional material that sales reps can leverage during a pitch to convince prospective buyers.

Lead generation software

A vital tool for all sales support executives, lead generation software keeps your company’s sales pipeline going, converting new customers and maintaining fresh revenue for your business.

Two types of software can help you with this: lead generation and lead management software. The former identifies outbound leads and guides prospects toward your sales pipeline. In contrast, lead management software qualifies, analyzes, and nurtures inbound leads, ensuring a smooth and quick transition from prospective buyers to satisfied customers.

Landing pages

In ecommerce, you will see better outcomes when you optimize your company website for improved sales performance. This means aligning the content and tone of individual product pages with the marketing channels drawing in customers.

Ensuring the design and features listed on product pages match the selling strategy helps increase conversions, making optimized landing pages a valuable tool for sales support.

Targeted marketing material

It’s extremely rare for an ecommerce company to sell just one product or cater to just one type of customer. This variance in demographics and product inventory requires the creation of specialized marketing materials to capture large audiences. One product might appeal to different types of customers because of the different features it offers.

Benefits and risks of sales support

If you run an ecommerce business, chances are that you’re familiar with or already use some of the previously discussed components of sales support. Now, you must bring them together under an overarching sales support strategy that’s efficient and effective.

You will know it’s past time for you to implement sales support processes when you experience the following:

Declining sales
Lack of synergy between sales and marketing
Dissatisfied customers
Delayed follow-ups to customer inquiries
Abandoned leads

All of these occurrences can have a seriously negative impact on your company’s performance, so you need to act quickly if you notice any of them. One of the most efficient ways to prevent dwindling performance is by implementing a sales support strategy.

Done correctly, sales support can greatly benefit your business. However, a hastily thought-out and poor sales support plan has drawbacks. Let’s look at the risks and benefits of sales support.

Benefits of strong sales support

The functions of sales support all work towards streamlining sales operations for your company. But what does that look like when measured against key performance indicators (KPIs)?

Here are the benefits you should be able to observe after implementing a smooth-functioning sales support framework:

Stronger sales opportunities: Lead generation, one of the most valuable functions of sales support, essentially prepares the runway for your sales reps to land the plane with a conversion. They then arrive for their customer interaction with all the information they need to stick the landing. By presenting sellers with prime opportunities to close, the benefits of sales support can be measured through metrics like conversion rate (CVR), average order value (AOV), and total revenue.
Healthier customer relationships: Ideally, you want your sales team to go after every closing opportunity. This means they may not have the time to devote to post-sale customer care. At best, they will continue servicing clients with divided attention. However, sales support can also play that role, nurturing a customer relationship after a rep has closed a sale. Customers are more satisfied with a dedicated resource for their inquiries, and this can be seen in metrics like customer satisfaction (CSAT) rating and net promoter score (NPS).
Increased productivity: Sales support enhances performance in several key business areas, improving productivity for the company. Sales, marketing, and customer service are where the effect of sales support is felt the most. Its impact can be measured by tracking metrics like monthly revenue, return on ad spend (ROAS), and customer engagement metrics like resolution rate.

Risks of poor sales support

After seeing how sales support can benefit your organization, you might need to start investing in sales support solutions immediately. But it’s best to exercise some restraint and not rush headlong into spending time and money on sales support measures.

First, you should outline your goals and expectations for the sales support strategy. If you proceed without a proper plan, you run the risk of experiencing these challenges:

Wasted resources: If sales support fails to bring marketing and sales departments on the same page, then you are looking at some avoidable losses. If the marketing strategy and advertising material are out of sync with the sales approach, then the time and money invested in those assets will be wasted. Remember that sobering statistic about 60% to 70% of B2B marketing materials going unused? This happens mainly because of a failure to reach the intended audience.
Breakdown in customer communications: If your sales support is not up to the mark, busy sales reps can neglect client relationships. Delayed response times and lack of contact with representatives can leave clients feeling ignored. This contributes to frustration that could ultimately result in a prospect going for one of your competitors instead.
Higher failure rates for sales reps: Poor support can quickly morph into a hurdle your sales reps must overcome. Unqualified client leads and incomplete customer information can actively detract from a sales rep’s chances of success. When leads are not nurtured properly, your company reps enter a cold sales conversation and may be unable to close the deal during their limited interactions.

How customer service technology can improve sales support

We’ve covered how lead generation software and SFA software help boost sales for your organization. That doesn’t mean the second key focus of sales support, customer service, should be neglected.

Your sales support team can leverage other software solutions to improve the quality of customer service.

1. Live customer service chat

Give customers a reliable and convenient channel to contact your company directly. Live customer service chat enables sales support agents to feed the sales pipeline while providing post-sales support and boosting customer satisfaction.

With software like LiveChat, you can easily add a live chat widget to your ecommerce website, significantly increasing customer engagement and converting casual browsers.

2. Chatbots

Depending on the scale of your business, live chat may not be an adequate customer service measure. To handle a large volume of customer inquiries and support requests, ecommerce companies should implement automation in their customer communications.

Artificial intelligence-powered chatbots can handle basic customer interactions, like recommending products or collecting information before passing the customer on to a human agent.

When you implement a sales support tool like ChatBot, your resolution rates and lead generation activities will grow.

3. Automated help desk software

Even if you have a large customer base, you still need to pay close attention to individual experiences. Delivering satisfactory solutions to customers when dealing with a large volume of support tickets can be challenging.

Consider implementing software like HelpDesk, which streamlines the process of ticket generation and issue resolution.

4. Customer knowledge base

Most customers would be happy to solve minor issues without any direct assistance. If sales support can provide the resources and information to find self-service solutions to their problem, it can lighten the customer service team’s workload.

Software like KnowledgeBase is the ideal solution for guiding and educating customers about your company’s products, processes, and policies.

How sales support increased an ecommerce company’s sales

There are many real-world examples of a company selecting the right sales support tools and strategies and experiencing tangible benefits as a result. Let’s look at a simple solution like live chat software.

An online marketing agency, Logical Position, wanted to increase the returns on its ad campaigns. It spent an average of $30 to score a single conversion through its website. In order to increase the number of conversions, the company decided to make sales support agents available to website visitors through LiveChat software. On desktop and mobile apps, company agents could answer customer requests much more quickly.

The effects were felt almost immediately. With agents always at hand to convert prospective customers, Logical Position saw a 150% increase in the number of inbound leads generated and 30% to 40% growth in inbound sales.

Conclusion

Sales support is a multifaceted, multidimensional business process. The ideal sales support team comprises professionals skilled in sales, marketing, and customer service.

Putting together the right sales support staff and equipping them with the most effective tools can make all the difference for your ecommerce company. Examine your company’s needs and business objectives and develop a sales support strategy that enables you to meet them. Soon, you will see the growth in your sales team’s performance.