The consumer goods industry has field reps responsible for communicating differentiated perspectives about their products. It can be a USP, Sales pitch, or Comparison points with competition in interactions either with retailers or end consumers as well.
In terms of the ground sales force – There are 2 kinds of teams. One is the sales team which only interacts with retailers and then retailers are the face to end-consumer in creating that push about the brand. Another is the product promoters or merchandisers deployed in major stores responsible for directly interacting with walk-in customers at that store to build brand awareness & generate sales through product storytelling, sampling, product demonstration, etc.
Since the field sales team is the face of the product either directly or indirectly, it becomes essential for the brand team/channel marketing team to pass on their idea of how a product needs to be pitched to trade or customers.
The brand team also needs to ensure that product communication is consistent across all touchpoints and sales team has enough support in terms of ensuring their learning about the same.
We will discuss the efficient ways of ensuring the same, the problems faced, and how technology can help in automation & altering sales team behavior to ensure communication success & sales impact.
- Demonstration
Since any product sales involve overcoming the psychological barrier in terms of changing consumer behavior towards a particular brand, conversion impact is directly dependent on the communication process followed. Demonstration either through product application, visual through video, or sampling becomes a clear differentiator for increasing the conversion impact. Demo content can be created by the brand team & pushed to the sales team – With the help of usage tracking brand, the team can know what type of content is team watching along with incentivizing merchandisers on no. of times they are demonstrating product videos.
- Customized Learning & Development
Not everyone in the sales team has the same learning & development requirements and calling them to the office for sales training programs takes away their crucial sales time. Digital training content targeted at specific sales team members depending on their individual needs proves to be more effective. This detection of specific needs can be achieved via business KPIs. KPIs-based detection provides a goal-driven strategic angle to business. Someone who is very good at maximizing order value but not good at range selling vs the other way will have different learning requirements, and if differential needs are detected through technology, it brings a clear sales impact.
- Content targeting & Driving consumption
Sales team app should have the configuration capability in terms of targeting specific content to specific users based on their roles, linguistic preferences, and specific learning needs. Driving consumption among the targeted audience becomes another challenge to solve. This is where sales team gamification can come into the picture, Digital tools can give the flexibility to track consumption and gamify that behavior by awarding specific points each time the video is played and a customer demo is done. This way sales team is well tracked and behavior well rewarded in order for a company’s goal-driven strategy to come to life.
- Assessment Setup
Sales team app can be integrated with any assessment application like Typeform. This can help with learning need identification that is still unmet and address them subsequently. Sales team don’t need to go outside their sales app, and assessments linked to gamification ensures that people paying attention to training get rewarded.
In addition to field sales team learning, in certain consumer goods companies where influencers play a key role in influencing consumer decisions like paints, and construction businesses it becomes critical to ensure influencer awareness about the product as well.
BeatRoute with its integrated modules on sales teams, retailers & influencers, and philosophy of Goal driven sales enablement platform provides learning & development configurable setup for consumer goods businesses. To know more about our approach, please book a free demo from here.
